#tbr

I find it interesting that people got triggered after I wrote I will move to another #Mastodon instance, because of the #500chars limit. (the instance I am on right now has a 10k chars limit ❤️).

The person argued that Mastodon is a #microblogging software, like people are forced to it and it's not a #macroblogging website.

And I told them that any Mastodon admin can do whatever they want to their Mastodon instance and that I don't understand why there is even a separation of micro and macro blogging at all? And I still can't understand it!

I mean who cares how long your post is? If it's not interesting for people, they will scroll along, so don't worry and even on limited instances there are people doing like 10 posts at once to communicate what they want to write. Why? Why isn't 1 post enough? Why is it such a problem for some people if a limitation for communication got removed? If people want, they can still shorten their texts to 500 chars, but why force them?

I really can't understand it! It's not like we are living in the 90s where limitations were real, because technology wasn't able to take more.

For example: SMS. You have space for 160 signs, because of the 7-bit limitation. If you use unicode, there are only 70 signs. After a while special software was created, which split text to several SMS without bothering the user, because the people wanted to write longer texts.

In the year 2006 Twitter was founded and until the year 2017 only 140 signs were allowed. Later only 280 were allowed.

If you look for Mastodon on your search engine of choice (yeah, maybe #ecosia or #duckduckgo or #SearXNG ), you can read on some websites it is the better twitter, because it supports 500 signs (one of the reasons), which is almost twice as much as Twitter allowed.

But why the limitation at all? We live in the 2020s! People upload pictures which need more space than a phone had in the 90s or than a 1.4" floppy disk had. Smartphones are more powerful than the #notebook I use right now to write this text. A whole film studio fits in a pocket, AI is creating beautiful paintings, music and can even write whole books and a lot of humans will lose their jobs, but people get triggered if we break a 500 char limit? Of all technical advances, why? Why being triggered if a limitation was (almost) removed?

If we really need a limitation, we should put it where it is useful, like limiting the traffic, because people watch a lot of videos on #youtube or #netflix in 4k (or even more pixels) or endless clips on #tiktok for hours. The #internet is producing 39.9 billion tons of #co2emissions every year (https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/carbon-footprint-internet/) and those numbers are rising, because people are more and more addicted to entertaining media and use more time to keep their online life/online avatar shiny and healthy, like a living being, instead of looking at their health in real life.

Instead of going for a walk in a forest (without a phone), they go outside for a few minutes, take a picture of a tree and post it with the text "I love nature!", waiting for responses of dozens of strangers. And it can't be possible I am the only one seeing a #paradox there.

A limitation of traffic could help, because people could still consume their favorite series or movies or influencers, but if they do it for hours, their devices go offline and people are forced to do stuff in real life, like reading a book #tbr , doing #sports, meet people/being #social, #knitting or all the other stuff they wanted to do for a long time.

And the good news is, that we are so technologically advanced, that we can still allow transferring needed communication, like emails or phone calls. Wouldn't this be a more useful limitation?

I have a theory why breaking the character limit is a problem: Nowadays people are addicted to "bad" dopamine. They need dopamine boosts and they need it fast and frequently. Long texts aren't good for it, because a picture with a short description is better and the picture is the most important part. If you have something cute, like kittens on it, you feel better, because you got a dopamine boost. But it doesn't last long. Only a few seconds! You feel bad after a short time and you have to scroll even more to find something what gives you the next boost and the next. After a while your brain is conditioned to a high amount of dopamine that it gets harder to feel lucky. It's like alcohol, you need more and more to get drunk, until you become an #alcoholic and deny an #addiction

Isn't that sad that this could be an explanation of why there is a char limitation on a few social media platforms, even if the word "social" is in it? Shouldn't social imply a communication without obstacles?

I can only recommend to consume less entertaining media and stick to an interesting topic for a while and with long texts going deep down and don't play the slot machine to hope to win something (pulling the lever down = update the timeline). You #gamble with your #sparetime and #lifetime if you do #doomscrolling

Another theory which strengthens the one before is, that big companies want you do stay longer on their platforms. It's a business model, because if you stay longer, you consume more ads, which their customers paid for and they get more data they can sell to anybody (and yes, you are the product and not the customer). To keep you on a platform, the dopamine lever must be high and even if it can be unhealthy or dangerous to keep the dopamine level high, companies don't care about it. As long as you feel good or even better, as long as you can only feel good while scrolling on social media, companies will make a lot of profit with short posts and pictures people can scroll throw without going deep into a topic or having even the chance to leave the platform to check facts or other stuff, because they will forget what they have seen seconds before. Or can you tell me what the last 3 posts were you have seen on #instagram #tiktok or #facebook or any other #socialmedia platform?

The #fediverse is not commercial and the char limitation was already broken the day the mastodon developers decided to limit it to 500 chars. After I've seen people being triggered by breaking the 500 chars limit I think people were triggered by Mastodon, too, because "Why would you allow almost twice as much chars than Twitter?" or similar weird questions might be asked the day it was published.

And for the people who got triggered even more telling me I must use another fediverse tool for it, my question is again: Why? I looked at or even tried #pleroma #friendica #misskey #calckey #hubzilla #lemmy #peertube #writefreely #bookwyrm and none of them are good for my needs. Either they are bloaty, have too many features, don't have the features I need or do completely different stuff.

What I want:

- An easy and intuitive UI (platforms like hubzilla feel like websites from the 90s. Try it if you don't believe me. You will not find anything!)
- A platform, which doesn't eat up a lot of resources, it should be #sustainable (ok, Mastodon isn't perfect, but better than others) #greenit
- Don't provide any possible feature (stick to #minimalism )
- Content focused (you can follow hashtags on Mastodon like #vegan or #crochet which is just awesome)
- Filter out stuff you don't want to see (Mastodon can filter hashtags, like #foodporn , too)
- Easily communicate with people (a popular fediverse tool like Mastodon is perfect for this) [But I still can't understand why I can find my own replies in the time line on the web version of Mastodon?]
- Let people from other bubbles start discussions about the stuff you show them from your bubble. Only because someone is interested in something, but doesn't know it, doesn't mean it's hate
- Let people write criticism (this isn't hate, too)
- Long posts and deep conversations (oh no, we have to change a single property on a Mastodon instance and we will trigger people with it)

If there is something, which fits to the list and is better than Mastodon, then let me know, please. I am curious and I am open to try new stuff!

And in the end we shouldn't force people to stick to what ever people think should be "normal". If someone wants to change something on his own Mastodon instance, then let him do it. It's like someone is putting a trailer on his own property and a neighbor is like "That's not what properties are for! We put houses on it! You have to do it, too!". Sounds ridiculous right?

Maybe you asked yourself, why do I write such a long text? Counter question: Do you think all of this information would fit in a 500 char field? No, I do it, because the topic is much bigger than anyone could explain it within a few words. A 500 characters limitation is changing the way we are living, the way we are communicating, the way our synapses grow and the way our brains evolve. It has an impact on our future and on the society.

But maybe I just wanted to set a new #worldrecord on writing most characters on a micro blogging platform with a readable and interesting text. Who knows? 😁

Naahhh... to be honest! I wanted to show that every single thing could have a huge impact and that there is always more than a few words could describe. People just have to be open for the input and don't scroll along if they didn't got a "bad" dopamine boost for a few seconds. And the very first time on Mastodon, I feel like I have said everything I wanted to say.

I wish you a beautiful day 🙂

P.S.: There are 193 chars left, even with the huge hashtag list in the end. It is possible to beat my world record on this Mastodon instance. 😜

#askfedi #askfediverse #fedihelp #mastohelp #askmasto #askmastodon #asktodon #followerpower #plzboost #boostswelcome #boostsappreciated #pleaseboost #tldr