I ought to have written something more long form about mastodon's ten year overnight success that hasn't quite taken hold yet. Seems like we'll hit critical mass for network effects to cause higher endogenous growth, rather than something exogenous like twitter increasing ban frequency.
Then again, I could be seriously underestimating the draw of celebrity accounts. I'd imagine celeb accounts bring in a less engaged user on average, so maybe this balances out from a network health perspective?
@Alonealastalovedalongthe I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other.
From a technical perspective I think celebrities are definitely likely to make these networks more lop sided and difficult to manage (see early twitter panics when bieber tweeted lady gaga or whatever). This might end up happening over time on mastodon as-is though, as existing accounts grow in popularity.
Still a big difference between organic on network growth and celebrities bringing their existing fans though.
@sharktopus in an abstract sense celebrities are forms of centralized social systems where the structure is embedded in people not code
@Alonealastalovedalongthe I try not to be categorically for or against anything in particular unless there's a strong evidentiary basis for causal links to good outcomes.
Is there anything about celebrity and the relationship graph structure in particular that you find troublesome or worthy of further consideration?
@sharktopus I mean in a practical sense no. In a compassionate sense I realize it is my own feelings and that in the end the loving thing to do is just let people be themselves. However, I guess in reflecting on what my favorite authors all have to say (especially thomas pynchon and james joyce), it comes down to the simple fact that human progress is the measure of how many people wake up to the value of themselves, and the apparently mundane life they live.
@sharktopus Sometimes I think celebrities harvest our insecurities and draw power from our belief that we aren't interesting. We aren't worthy of telling stories about. The health of a community to me can be defined as the amount its members interact, consume and create for local audiences. Centralized attention around celebrities is a sign that there is still work to be done I guess? However, I realize people love celebrities and who I am to grumble from under my tiny rock.
@sharktopus and my conception falls apart when you think about popular artists that dared to be vulnerable and show who they really are to a mass audience and in doing so validated tons of people who before, out of necessity, had to hide parts of themselves.
@sharktopus Celebrities form centralized human networks, do we want that?