blog.abtmtr.link/mtr/

written by Mind, Thea, and abtmtr.link

why do we even have to be updated on everything that's going on. why do we have an infinitely-scrolling feed of posts? fedi is lame this format does not deserve our respect and it is very indicative of a toxic relationship with how content on the internet is presented

do we need microblogging? do we even need to post quick, short, quippy statuses on the internet when all it does is encourage negativity and incomprehensible debates? we love all of our fedi friends and we're very glad all of you are here but this platform is the worst and we kind of hate it and we hate moderating it

we don't hate @larsfrommars@toot.garden for example but we hate the format it posts in. fedi could of course be an art but i don't think a fast-scrolling short-form dump of larsposts can carry nor convey as much artistic value as said larsposts contain or require lars, of course, has mastered this format, but in a way where it has had to compromise itself in order to stand out among many others who are also trying to stand out. in fedi, nobody stands out, and therefore, nobody is unique (a-la Syndrome from The Incredibles)

we hate seeing people who have come ripe from places like Twitter and Bluesky and who have never had that normalcy stripped away from them. Mastodon, I believe preserves that veil of “This is still Twitter, it's just open-source and decentralized”, and therefore, the likes of @TechConnectify@mas.to just move there and do what they did on Twitter. Sure, you can be “that snarky, sometimes cranky YouTube person” – there's literally nothing wrong with that – but on a platform where nuanced, rational, healthy arguments are rendered moot by the fast-paced requirements of an always-updating, short form feed, where it's completely normal (and required) to summarize every single one of your arguments in under 500 characters, is is really healthy to be that kind of person on the Fediverse, or anywhere like the Fediverse?

Of course, platforms like Akkoma and Misskey are also exactly like this. They may look and act different from Twitter or even Mastodon, but if it can use a Soapbox/Mastodon frontend, and is compatible with Soapbox/Mastodon backend APIs, is it really any different from Mastodon in the end? When Mastodon users are going to see your statuses as Mastodon posts, are you really any different from anybody else? We preserve this “akkoma superiority” over Mastodon and such, but it's all fake. We hate Akkoma and Misskey just as much as we do Mastodon for these exact reasons. We're so damn tired of being on here. The same shit happens every goddamn month and we're over it.

All of you who fall for the whims of the timeline while objecting that “it’s better because there’s no algorithm” are still being manipulated. Sure, there’s nothing giving you recommendations, and that can be better for privacy’s sake. But for mental health’s sake, a timeline with no recommendations does you no better than a timeline with recommendations, because the format of a timeline is flawed when it’s used in a social sense. “The Algorithm” is just time now. It's the most recent thing being posted. It's what your friend just did, or watched. Honestly, we hate that.

We will be leaving Fedi for now, because we really don't see much value in it as a concept. It's a great place filled with great people who are just like us, but the concept of “decentralized social media” is lame when it looks, acts, and feels just like Twitter did, so we're just... out of it. Of course, the thing that’s keeping us from actually leaving Fedi the most is local.abtmtr.link itself. It’s our server, and we can’t just leave it like we didn’t make it. But we’re tired of Fedi, and we’re not sure what to do with it at this moment. So, we’ll just leave it ourselves, and watch over, hoping our friends don’t fuck up the server. I trust them, because they’re our friends, but… y’know, things can happen.