Blurts

The exodus of Twitter users seeking a friendlier and more productive alternative seems to have reversed. While Mastodon has far more active users than it had just a few months ago, it appears many of those who explored Mastodon instances have not stuck around or have become inactive. The reasons are many. The most obvious issue, the network effect, sets in when new users begin to miss the familiar group they left and who did not follow. Even though Mastodon is far more active and interactive than it was before the influx of new users, established connections are no longer there and new users have yet to make the type of connections they abandoned. 

The other significant issue is that Mastodon does not work like Twitter. It is a federated service made up of many instances operated mostly by volunteers who set up a server just because it seemed like a thing to do. Perhaps they had a general focus in mind and perhaps they did not. So, in addition to new people, new users encounter a much more fractionated environment when they originally could satisfy a variety of interests using one service.

There are strategies that users can apply to deal with a federated environment. If you join several different instances which is probably what you will want to do, you can use a client that allows simultaneous access to your different instances. A client called Mastodeck displays multiple columns of content. If you used TweetDeck, this client works the same because it was developed by the same folks. A column can display content associated with a given tag or to the purpose I am addressing here with the content from different instances.

Maybe it is specific people rather than instances want to follow and these individuals are distributed across multiple instances. Any given Mastodon instance should provide options for home, local, and federated. The local option shows posts (toots) from all users on the instance (server) that you are presently using (BTW – it is not that difficult to switch between instances). Home shows you posts from all users you follow (the present instance and others). So if you want, you can follow me at @grabe@twit.social no matter what instance you use. Follow others from other servers and you have pretty much duplicated the chronological version of Twitter (not the “For you” option which is based on the Twitter algorithm). Federated follows those you follow and their followers which should generate the most content, but not necessarily the content you want to consume. 

I am not necessarily arguing that you abandon Twitter. I do suggest you ignore “For you” and rely on “Following” which gives you a feed in chronological order of those you follow. Whatever you think of what Twitter has become under Musk’s “guidance” and ownership, I believe diversity in social media options is important and I first joined the original Mastodon instance “mastodon.social” in 2016. Social media services are likely to be responsive to users and to improve their services partly in response to competition from other services making the same commitments. 

For those interested in AI and AI applied to language challenges such as what are demonstrated in ChatGPT, I recommend this explanation by Wolfram. I admit it is way over my head and I became completely lost when it moved beyond generating sentences to sentences that reflect the knowledge in its knowledge base. I was exposed to matrix mathematics back in graduate school, but I did not take the calculus-based version of statistics so the determination of weights and such things are beyond my understanding. The math is just one of the issues to contemplate in machine learning. I have been looking for something that took on the challenge of explaining the AI of language understanding and production. I think I have found such as effort, but to my frustration I just can’t understand it. Wolfram has a YouTube effort to explain many of the same concepts, but he seems to explain things well but my comprehension was the same – Wolfram YouTube and Wolfram YouTube

The algorithms that prioritize what I encounter online fascinate me. How the exhaust from my online behavior can be used to determine what interests me or might be valuable to me and then is used to address these priorities seems potentially quite useful and I suppose under different circumstances quite frightening. Whether useful or damaging, how it all works is intriguing.

With Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the algorithm that determines what appears at the top of my feed has obviously changed. This algorithm is the default provided Twitter users as “For You”. I cannot figure out what the “For you” algorithm was designed to do. It now could be a direct feed from TruthSocial and it certainly is not providing content I would seek out. I am completely mystified by what about my use of Twitter would encourage this collection of misinformation. As a means to prioritize what interests me, it is a complete failure. So what is the goal?

One of the challenges facing those making a transition from Twitter to Mastodon is the variety of instances that they may find interesting. Mastodon is a federated system meaning there are many hosts unlike the single host for Twitter. You may join one instance and invest time building up a group of associates there and then find that another instance may have a focus even better suited to your personal interests. You can join multiple instances and with a little work it is easy enough to switch from instance to instance to catch up, but there is now an easier way.

Mastodeck may remind many of TweetDeck. Tweetdeck was a multicolumn twitter client that allowed a user to follow multiple inputs. Usually, the columns followed your main feed and the others followed different hashtags. Mastodeck provides the same capability for Mastodon, but also allows you to assign your different instances to different columns. This means you can now go to one site to follow all of your instances without having to manually use the preferences of a single client to switch among your instances.

Last post of 2022

I have long been a supporter of K12 technology. I think a lot of pro-tech types thought that the COVID situation of 2020-2021 and the related required greater use of technology would generate systemic change. This does not appear to be the case and there may even be a bit of a backlash. The “Zoom experience” was often blamed for boredom and what seems to be multi-month learning loss.

I have been reading a book about educational reform and Horn makes the following observation about crisis and change. Horn claims that studies of leadership during crises show that crises are great for increasing the availability of resources, but not for creativity applied to solutions. He describes what he thinks happened in educators responding to COVID, but also the newspaper industry as ad revenue was suddenly diverted to online posting. Those in leadership doubled down on what they knew and the pressure from the need for an immediate response. They put the stories that would typically go in the paper online often behind a paywall and they tried to run classes online as if they were in a face-to-face environment.

Horn suggests that studies of the response of organizations to challenges show that organizations need a separate group focused on innovation allowed to work independently from those who would normally control decisions. This separation allows a broader focus and more flexibility in the generation of suggestions.

Horn, M. B. (2022). From Reopen to Reinvent:(Re) Creating School for Every Child. John Wiley & Sons.

I have described the circumstances that led Cindy to invest in the development of Bird Buddy in a previous post. Quickly, Bird Buddy is a combination bird feeder and motion activated camera that allows the collection of the images that come to the feeder.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Bird Buddy is that it continues to be improved even once you own one. This comes about through software updates. First, the company improved the battery life. Now, I find that our device can record video. Here is the first recording – a female and then a male Northern Cardinal.

I have made the effort to create several posts about this product because some have continually complained online about the product. First, there were accusations that the company was ripping off those who had invested. I don’t think people understand IndieGoGo and similar ventures. If you invest, you are not guaranteed of anything. You may receive a product if the product materializes. In this case, there is now a product and you can purchase it through multiple sources, but there were no guarantees in the beginning.

They there were complaints about the battery life, the failure of birds to use the feeder, and the failure of the device to capture images. It may take some time for birds to find a new feeder. You learn this if you have fed birds before. The other issues may involve assumptions about how far you can position the feeder from your house and the wireless access required to control the feeder. Other problems involved not understanding how to install the updates and the battery life. This last issue has been improved with updates, but the battery life is an issue. Even with the solar panel, the a charge may be exhausted in a couple of days. Not a huge issue for me, but be warned when making a purchase.

What no one complains about is the quality of the images (and now video) that the device generates. I am completely satisfied with the value we have received for our investment.