@aral @af

"If we don’t believe design shapes behaviour, let’s do an experiment: let’s get Elon to hand Twitter over to Eugen and let’s rebrand it Mastodon but not change anything else. If you’re right, it should magically become like Mastodon."

Umm, but in fairness that is a slightly simplified example, no? I would say it primarily is the algorithm on Twitter that creates and enforces the toxic behaviour. That is the design that shapes the bad behaviour.

There, if people start interacting with a post, good or bad, it will be lifted by the algorithm to any and all the algorithm has deemed to be interested in it, to create more interaction. More interaction = more eyeballs = more advertising revenue.

None of that algo-black-magic happens here in the Fediverse. A post gets its slot in the chronological timeline and only those who follow me will see my posts in their home timelines. If they missed it it'll take work to find it again.

Regardless of how many likes your post get, or my quote of your post will get, it will not be lifted and repeated in the timelines by some algorithm for those that didn't happen to be by their screens when it was posted (by whomever of us they follow). Correct?

@Gargron