I still think it's worth reflecting which of the toxic patterns we want to, or don't want to reproduce on non-commercial networks like mastodon. Infinite scroll, quote reply, the like button... all these aren't neutral, and discussions were rightly heated about introducing them.

i find this sorta thing very interesting because not only have i never experienced the 'early' social networks as described (too young), i've never even considered using one of these sites as described - why would i voluntarily forgo pseudonymity on the public internet? I don't think this was fully a generational thing, i remember being genuinely baffled when i discovered my peers/classmates were using their real names, posting pictures/videos of themselves, and interacting with each other on these public platforms; wasn't internet safety 101 "Don't Do That?"

FB is still a social network, but seemingly only when you use groups. And you actively need to moderate those. Public pages, and things like that? AI/bots and ads wasteland.

I have never used mastodon, but why is it so much better than X (twitter)? I also follow a small group of people on X that I find interesting and I get a chronological feed of their posts in the “following” tab. I know that the “For You” tab abyss is right there. I opened it once, was shocked by all the crap the system assumed I would like, and never went back. The good thing is that nobody forces me to use it. I am perfectly fine in the “following” feed and not exposed at all to recommender systems trying to grab my attention. Only the ads in the feed annoy me - and they are so bad that I wonder how X makes any money.

Having moved to Mastodon, I also recovered some faith in the Internet (of old). You control your timeline. You are not the consumer being fed stuff, you choose what you want to see.

As a side note, I keep hearing people recommend threads, bluesky, or other corporate media machine du jour and I cannot understand how people can't learn a lesson. If you touch a hot stove once, you normally don't touch one again. And yet here I see people around me hoping (against all reason) that this time it will be different, really, this corporation is good, this service will not get progressively ensh*ttified like every other service that came before. It baffles me.

Mastodon is different. It is not owned by a single corp (nitpickers get your engines started) and can't be turned into a machine that juices your attention span for money.

Recently I realized something. Back in the day in the early 2000s people were talking about this thing called social media that didn't really exist but would be the future. (That and micro transactions) I never got what was so hot about it.

Looking back I am realizing that the techno elite did not coopt something that used to be nice. This whole narrative control and private information funnel was designed from the beginning with what it became today already on their crosshairs. We just went through the phases and ate all of it up.

>It feels closer to how social networks used to work originally. I hope it stays that way.

Is there something about it (it's architecture or the company behind it) that is fundamentally different than other social networks? If not, it is doomed to follow them all eventually.

The final transition happened with the death of online forums. I still miss those dearly. I've met extremely interesting and competent people with a true desire to interact with passionate peers. They thought me how to ask for and give advice, how to express opinions in public, the value of growing a community around common interest, and the joy of laughing and getting angry on the OT section.

Unrelated to the topic described in the blog itself, I overall like the theme of `susam.net`. The name itself reminded me of a sesame seed in Turkish for a while. (I think author had recently mentioned one of the recent posts that they wanted to get susam.com but that was already taken by a Turkish company selling some spices...)

The content (that shows up in HN) is also good. Since I am on mobile device, I cannot tell the exact font used, but seems like Georgia to me. While https://github.com/susam/susam.net hosts the actual source code of the website.

Another remark: Would be really nice to have a same theme adaptation for BearBlog and similar places.

Social Networks ⊆ Attention Media.