osteophage | Entries tagged with site features

Twitter and its imitators have adopted a structural design that is fundamentally bad for people. This isn't just a matter of who's in charge; it's a problem with the thing itself. Forcing users to adhere to a tight character limit, discouraging link culture, preventing people from editing their own posts, steering people into sharing things they hate, incentivizing rage bait with trending feeds, subjecting people to decontextualized encounters, encouraging conflict by discouraging tags, and leaving users powerless to clean up the resulting mess—all of this is bad shape.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Neocities. For off-site linking, I recommend using the version on Neocities.

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Whatever the benefits of decentralization may be, hyping it up becomes a problem when it's presented as a workaround for ignoring the money question. The money question (i.e. "how are you funding this thing?") is what actually determines a platform's incentives—a problem that has been touched on but quickly brushed aside by major proponents of decentralization. Decentralization, they say, is supposed to make the money question irrelevant by making it easier for users to switch from one site to another. This argument overlooks the limitations of switching as a strategy, neglects to account for how things actually play out in practice, and fails to propose a less exploitative approach to funding social media.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Neocities. For off-site linking, I recommend using the version on Neocities.

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For those interested in creating a less toxic, more communal, more courteous web, part of that process should involve supporting the guest/host relationship. The guest/host relationship involves a certain set of obligations — obligations of mutual courtesy — that platforms can encourage by granting their users the power of host veto. This may sound counterintuitive for those used to more individualist thinking, since it's easy to imagine hypothetical scenarios where this feature could be used unfairly. Even so, the alternative is worse, and here's why.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Neocities.

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When websites encourage their users to rely on unmoderated tag searches as topic subscriptions, they run the risk of encouraging the pasta convention paradigm. The pasta convention paradigm originates from Tumblr but is liable to crop up on sites with similar features with regard to bookmarking tags. Bookmarked tags, in these contexts, become treated as makeshift community pages, but they lack any of the appropriate tools for moderation, which sets people up for needless frustration and disappointment.

Crossposted to Pillowfort.

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[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Nov 6, 2020.]

Okay, CT suggested I write the darn post, so I'm going to write the darn post. Who knows if this'll become relevant to anything again, but in case it does, I'll have this on hand to link.

Let's say somebody says or does something objectionable and I'm motivated to respond to it, but that person has no public contact info available -- save for their tumblr askbox. Supposing I take on the challenge of going this route (and I usually don't), here is an attempt to spell out some of the difficulties involved. ( Read more... )

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Nov 23, 2019.]

Are you a member of a small, marginalized identity-based community of Tumblr bloggers, looking to advocate for yourselves, support each other, have meaningful discussions, build, and grow? Then Tumblr itself is standing in your way. ( Read more... )

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Dec 19, 2018. It could probably use some edits, but this version is current as of 8 months ago.]

A post on why I think the separation of comments and reblogs is a good thing, with communal, social benefits that exceed the importance of its drawbacks, and why I think Pillowfort's current reblog system should stay that way. This post is separated into six parts: some rules of engagement, lit review, definitions of terms, my stance, some context, and my reasons.

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Coyote's Dreamwidth Blog

Entries tagged with site features

Twitterlike is a Bad Shape

Decentralization is Not, Itself, An Answer to The Money Question

Designing for the Guest/Host Relationship As Part of A More Prosocial Web

A Tag Search is Not a Fan Convention

Tumblr Asks Are My Personal Hell

How Using Tumblr is Undermining Your Community

In Defense of the Pillowfort Reblog System

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