I think she is probably right. Internet outrage drives mainstream social media. Twitter seems just as bad, if not worse.
I'd like the Fediverse to be a place of laughter, not anger. How can we design it to encourage that behavior?
@alex I feel like this is a more culture thing than a policy or design thing, right? People are gonna do what they're gonna do. If the #Fediverse (or #Twitter even) was filled with nice people, there wouldn't be any anger to peddle.
Part of the issue is that the #Fediverse attracts people from both ends of highly polarized scales, and most people interesting in pop culture and fun aren't turned off by #Twitter or other platforms yet.
But #Twitter will. So probably the best thing to do in the meantime is make the #Fediverse a better place by building better software (which you're doing rn) and instances. In my opinion.
P.S. It seems that Joanna's qualms come from #BigTech's tendency to drive users to controversial and angering content. By design the #Fediverse has already fixed this problem.
For example, I learned that some people keep lions as house pets, and once researched what it would take. Apparently you need a huge amount of space for the lion to run around, things to climb and jump on, places to hide, etc. Without these things, the lion becomes depressed.
I think people are like that too. A lot of depression we face is not due to chronic mental illness (some of it might be), but rather due to living in an environment not conducive to happiness.
The idea of "designing a new environment" is foundational to who I am and what my politics are. This is why I've always been more left-leaning in my politics, and why the idea of "radical" politics (ie changing things "at the roots") attracts me.
I think there are just some ways of doing things we haven't discovered yet.
@alex What about creating highly isolated instances, fostering the community and tailoring it to only nice people, and slowly adding instances to the whitelists?
That might help keep the timelines kinder. Although that opposes my "world wild west" sensibilities, a community designed in this way is necessary, in a sense.
Kinda the point of my Gleasonator alt tbh
