Welcome to the second installment of Weaver’s Deep Thoughts. I’ve been following the Twitter drama like many folks, and I’ve decided to follow up the first edition which was about content moderation on social networks with more deep thoughts about social media. I’ve also got some special news about my current book-in-progress and a special guest for this issue.
In this issue:
Book-in-progress: Jonah of Olympic news.
My Twitter usage.
Content moderation and the Twitter situation.
Pluspora: Di Cleverly discusses owning and managing a social network instance.
Music: “Can I Get a Witness?” by The Rolling Stones.
Book-in-progress: Jonah of Olympic news.
I completed Draft 2 of my current book, which is the second book in the Mercedes Masterson Detective Stories. The next phase will be getting a copy to beta readers to sift through and give me feedback. This is an exciting time for me, because the beta process is the first time people read the book. All this time I’ve been keeping it pretty close to the chest.
If anyone reading this is interested in becoming a beta reader, please let me know in the comments below by Monday, December 12th, 2022. I can be kinda picky about my beta readers, so don’t be offended if I’m not sure you are a good fit for the process. Just let me know and we’ll go from there. All my beta readers get a free copy of the book when it’s finished. If you haven’t read the first book, Sweet Sixteen Killer, don’t sweat it as I can get you a copy of that so you can catch up.
Receive Weaver's Deep Thoughts updates in your email.
Subscribe to receive the monthly newsletter and blog posts delivered to your inbox.
My Twitter usage.
I have deactivated several accounts I managed. Most importantly, I deactivated my personal account which was my most used and longest lasting. Not before I downloaded my archive, though, which I recommend everyone do even if they aren’t planning on deactivating. My current date for total deletion is December 18, 2022. Good night, and good luck.
I rarely go to the Twitter website anymore, whereas I used to check in multiple times a day.
I also removed “tweet” share buttons from websites I manage. I’m also avoiding using tweets as sources, especially when you consider the damage to its trust that was done regarding impersonation. So, hopefully, you will never see a link to a tweet in this newsletter. Instead, I’d rather link to a news story from a reputable source. The way I see it, if we truly distrust and do not want to engage in Elon Musk’s pile, we must do more than just pause or dial back usage.
Content Moderation
and the Twitter Situation
Content moderation and the Twitter situation.
A lot has happened in the Musk and Twitter Affair since the previous edition, and as expected content moderation has taken a massive blow. Early on Musk had shown his dislike of content moderation, preaching the right-wing refrain of “free speech.” Following layoffs, resignations, layoffs, resignations, and so on, few teams have survived or are left with scraps. In the November edition of this newsletter, I talked at length about the importance of content moderation for social media, and I stressed this point, “Social networks must have content moderation because without it a network implodes.” This, and the importance of deciding what kind of community you want to build is important. Musk has decided he wants to build a right-wing community, which begats hate and other problems, though he is struggling to do so while keeping advertisers – according to Media Matters, within a matter of weeks the situation has chased off 50 of the top 100 advertisers.
(D)isinformation researchers and activists say, the team that took down toxic and fake content vanished. Now, after years of developing relationships within those teams, researchers say no one is responding to their reports of disinformation on the site, even as data suggests Twitter is becoming more toxic.
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve grown tired of hot takes concerning what Musk is up to or why he is up to certain things. Many of the hot takes around Musk give him far too much credit and I’ve grown weary of them. The simplicity of it is that he has no clue how to run a social network, he’s made that evident time and time again. What he does want to do is remove as much content moderation as possible, add back banned accounts, chase off “woke liberal” accounts, and have his cake and eat it too with advertisers because he wants to make money from Twitter. Within a matter of weeks, Musk has made mistake after mistake that he’s had to backtrack on. He doesn’t change his mind or finally make up his mind as I’ve seen suggested. He’s running fast, making lots of decisions, and making lots of mistakes in the process. He reminds me of my 2am self who produces great ideas that I determine are garbage when I get up the next morning. I don’t implement those ideas at scale and ruin peoples’ livelihoods.
Pluspora: Di Cleverly discusses owning and managing a social network instance.
Di Cleverly and I worked together on a Diaspora instance called Pluspora for about four years. She was an administrator, one of two, and I was a content moderator. I also worked with her to write our policies around content moderation, the part I liked the most, honestly. She recently wrote a Twitter thread about that experience and current experiences people are going through, especially as it pertains to the Fediverse and Mastodon. True to my word, I am not linking to that Twitter thread, but instead I’ve edited the piece and am including it here. Di, as I know her, will be around in the comments so leave her comments or questions if you want. She’s good people. Her thoughts follow the next image.
Storytime.
Written by Di Cleverly.
In 2018, Google+ announced it was discontinuing its consumer-facing product. At the time I had a small instance on Diaspora (aptly named Pluspora) and I invited all displaced Google+ users to come. Here's what happened next and some tips for people migrating to Mastodon and/or starting instances there.
Growing pains.
I urge folks going through the #TwitterMigration to have patience. Mass switching to new platforms is difficult. New users are incurring costs and extra workload (help, moderation) on their pod owners. Culture clash is very real, so be kind to one another and try to assimilate.
Over the next weekend we went from having slightly over 100 people who I knew well from Google+ on my instance to about 15,000. At that time, it was only myself and David Thiery as admins (he was my co-creator and engineer), and Nathan Weaver as my sole moderator. We paid less than $50 a month before the influx and had no real moderation.
Within that weekend we had to increase our storage and server fees three times. The site crashed once because of these upgrades and being overwhelmed. Our financial commitment went from under $50/month to several hundred and climbed rapidly. We set a limit at $500/mo.
The huge influx of new people, who had never used the platform before required a new strategy. I personally tried to greet many new members and send them instructions and how to get help; no bots for this. But without it, users would have floundered, it's hard to learn a new social network.
Even so, we managed to onboard several tens of thousands of users on to Pluspora over the next few weeks. David and I were insanely busy with this process. People were frustrated with several features that were missing: no edit button, no proper block button, no mobile app. These were features they'd grown accustomed to on Google+.
There is a lot of general frustration of having to learn a new platform again. We had all these new users flooding a previously small, tight knit community that didn't really want users from a different platform complaining there. Friction.
There is no proper block on Diaspora, because of the nature of their structure. You can post completely privately, and the blocked person can't come on your post. However, if you comment on an open post, they can do the same. Meaning, you can interact with each other. This friction and lack of a true block feature, along with the already frustrated and frankly, angry and hurt people from Google+ who never asked to have to move from where they were comfortable, caused a big attrition over the 6 months of users. Our instance registered several tens of thousands of accounts.
With users come content, with content comes moderation.
The number of active accounts dwindled to slightly below 10,000. We were still one of the largest pods, and I needed content moderators, and quick. Thankfully, Nathan had come onboard as a moderator the summer before Google+ announced it was closing. We added a handful more after the influx.
The Fediverse is a connected grouping of smaller instances (servers). This system is fantastic for social media in that one flaky CEO will not be able to destroy your site. Content creators work hard and put a lot of faith in their platform. They are vulnerable. Individual instances also help with data breaches. We pledged to keep that data and our users free from any undue influence. Your data is valuable, more than you can imagine. When you sign up on sites, and start posting, you better have trust in that platform, because bad actors will try to get your data, buy it, invade the platform with bots, steal it, constantly.
Which brings us back to content moderation. While I could moderate what my users post, I couldn't do much about posts on other instances. Or people; it's difficult to ban individual users from your instance.
There are several reasons for this:
Shadow-banning is not a practice in the Fediverse.
Unlike your own users, who you can contact via email, it's difficult to contact another instance's user and let them know they are violating rules and are being banned.
Content on other instances can't be moderated. You can ask the owner, but they don't always respond. My users got frustrated from the homophobic, antisemitic, and racist posts in their stream; most eventually learned how to avoid it by adjusting their settings. We constantly had to deal with catfish, bots from other countries, and my least favorite, reporting child porn. Because the federation allows NSFW content there was a lot of child porn to report to the authorities.
Conclusion.
Pluspora recently closed down due to the sudden death of my dear friend and co-creator, David Thiery. Most of the group remaining over the four plus years migrated to other instances, another advantage of the Federation model - - if an instance closes, you can just move to a new one. As for me, my experience with running a large Diaspora* instance left me burnt out from social media.
This time around Nathan and I are running a small discord server for newly displaced Twitter users who became friends first on Google+. So far it has been a lot easier and fun.
Along the way, we had so much help from the Diaspora volunteer development team. Yes, volunteers -- unlike Twitter engineers, they are not paid. I'd also like to thank Nathan Fox, who was a genius and helped us with some tricky coding.
Music: "Can I Get a Witness?" by The Rolling Stones.
