Unangbangkay
@Unangbangkay

which is to say rip to the people on bsky who were hoping to normalize something different by sheer force of will while mostly replicating the structure and engagement pattern of present-day twitter**

*This is of course not to say that things are perfect here and that no other place is needed, but i guess i'm observing that if you're gonna try for something different, a different environment makes it easier for that to happen. (not to mention the slight irony of cohost's case, where easiest way to explain it to a newcomer is to ask if they have any experience on Tumblr lol)

**Also not to say that this was inevitable but when it's mostly the same people posting the same things on a website that behaves the same way, and the only perceptible difference is the number of people posting, well


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in reply to @Unangbangkay's post:

Also, the relationship between structure and results is at least partially chaotic: that is, if you recreate the same structure, sure, you'll tend towards the same results but if you change pieces X, Y, and Z, you may have no idea how the results will change unless you build it and let it grow and find out. Even if other people have tried each modification in isolation, sometimes effects combine in improved new ways.

Oh absolutely.

Belatedly I realize that I may have misspoke in not clarifying that what I meant by "viable" in the comment was "as a Twitter 2" and not "as a business" (which, to its credit, Twitter seemed to be until late last year).

it's mostly the same people posting the same things on a website that behaves the same way

Yeah. That's a good way to put it.

Part of the problem with BS is that people might agree in the abstract that "we don't want the atmosphere of Twitter," but they haven't pinpointed what exact elements actually contributed to the atmosphere of Twitter. BS wants to put a new spin on things with decentralization (hasn't happened yet) and "composable moderation" (ripe for abuse). None of that actually makes sense as a fix to Twitter's problems, and yet a whole bunch of journalists have bought it hook, line, and sinker.

To actually mitigate a problem it helps to have an understanding of what wrong in the first place. For example, to actually mitigate the level of antagonism that's arisen on Tumblr, it helps if you can identify how issues arise from features like reblog additions and bookmarked tags.