This week I talked to two different friends who are still on Facebook, and independent of each other they both said it was because of how the Facebook groups gave them easy access to information about their hobby, e.g. knitting.
So I need to ask: Can Mastodon compete with that and how?
@randahl For me I’ve found it to be an improvement. By following the knitting hashtag I get to see all the posts about knitting (not just those of people who’ve joined a particular group) and only the posts about knitting - no off topic threads.
The knitting community on here is, in general, very active & happy to share knowledge and encouragement. I don’t tend to join in with knit alongs and the like but I see plenty of them going on
@randahl in that regard, mastodon is similiar to tumblr (well, nowadays tumblr also has "communities"). You follow a hashtag(s) and get the content. The Knitting and Sewing community, i think, is steadily growing.
@randahl so glad you've asked this question, as I've been thinkiing about it 24-7. I used to curate niche images on instagram - it mightn't sound like much, but it had 100k followers, and I became a columnist for a niche magazine too.
Prior to that, I blogged about knitting, attended socksummit (yeah, it was a conference for people who knitted socks by hand in Portland, Oregon with 3000+ attendees).
How do you get them over here?
One way? Crowdfund a new instance/thingy just for them. (cont)
@randahl
If you think of Mastodon as content on knitting. You need to create an app that reads that content.
Apps can contain algorithms too. This is not an anathema. The idea of Mastodon is the freedom to choose, not anti-algorithm.
On the one hand, people are asking for a decentralised platform and on the other hand people are complaining it’s not behaving like a centralised platform. And they are asking the central body to centralise.
I have said this before. Just make an iPhone and Android app that reads all FOSS and give it the means to take filters and deploy optional on device algorithms.
To look at Mastodon is to look in the wrong place. Mastodon is already doing what it should.
@randahl There is a nice group of knitters and spinners here that post with hastags and interact frequently. Other than that I use Ravelry. That has a huge amount of information and active forums of many kinds. But I’ve never used FB so I can’t compare. I’ve heard other knitters enthousiast about Bluesky.
You could just remind them about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
@randahl Technically it can but the problem is the network effect: Mastodon is much much smaller than Facebook and so you have less users to chat with and less information.
@randahl good question. There used to be forums for this kind of interaction, but they all died when ppl moved to FB. I didn't, never, for reasons, and lost contact to a lot of nice folks and there are topics I never found on t or anywhere here.
@randahl There are also a fair few spinners, but I'm not sure which hashtag is the best one to follow for that: #textilearts or #fiberarts or #fibrearts - maybe we all ought to switch to #textilearts simply because it avoids the confusion of US versus non-US spelling.
@randahl
Also many small businesses (here, anyway) have fb but no web site.
I have a similar situation. I facet as a hobby. All I use facebook for is that. Both for access to the manufacture who seems to think that is fine for support and other hobbyist.
In a way I am a drag on facebook since I use adguard, privcy badger ublock and other items so I do not see most of the crap they want me to look at. And I avoid those reels things and such like the plague.
4 groups on facebook are all I use. If they moved offsite I would follow. There are a few groups on here but they are dead. Maybe a message every few months at most.
@randahl yeah that one I find strange… I already have an easy time getting info about my hobbies on Mastodon, but maybe because people who share my hobbies are already here? Is it just that some people are too lazy to switch out of their doomscrolling app to find hobby info in other online places? I don’t want one app that does all the things, I prefer to compartmentalise so my work info and hobby info and family info are not all mixed together.
@emmadavidson
Surely here must be a way (a front end client) to keep all those things separate by having a variety of feeds on a number of separate u/i ? Masto has hashtags and could be of use to do this? Or Lists, or something else? I don’t know. Though it seems to me that peeps are unwilling to get off some techbro platforms because not all the other parties in their social circle can be bothered to get off them.
@randahl yeah that one I find strange… I already have an easy time getting info about my hobbies on Mastodon, but maybe because people who share my hobbies are already here? Is it just that some people are too lazy to switch out of their doomscrolling app to find hobby info in other online places? I don’t want one app that does all the things, I prefer to compartmentalise so my work info and hobby info and family info are not all mixed together.
@randahl Here is a start. Because you need to join if you want it to grow.
Can you ask who provides the information?
If fellow enthusiasts, there are probably some here, and they’ll be fine if they come in a group.
If knitting stores and manufacturers, there’s a tradeoff between the stores not wanting to do the socials on yet another platform BUT surely it would be nice to have a business channel not under the thumb of a platform trap?
If influencers… man, I don’t know, although also I don’t actually know.
@randahl But can the info in FB groups be trusted? Local clubs and communities in which people can interact in person are better than FB groups.
Usually it’s Ravelry that provides that…
I see lots of knitting chat and advice here, but I don’t know of a specific server.
Maybe if someone started @knitting.social and went on Facebook and convinced all the knitters to join 🤷
Maybe if someone started @knitting.social and went on Facebook and convinced all the knitters to join 🤷
@randahl it's a network size effect, Mastodon doesn't have as many active users for covering all the interests
