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  • Annalee Newitz 🍜annaleen@wandering.shop
    Oct 17, 2026, 1:39 AM

    Something I've noticed while on book tour for the past couple of weeks is that Mastodon is a really good way to let people know about bookstore events. So many people I've met on the road have told me that they found out about my book tour from me or other folks on the fedi. I think it's partly because so many book-loving people are on Mastodon. But also if you compare Mastodon to places like Bluesky or Insta, the community here has a higher percentage of actual humans vs. bots or operatives.

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  • Annalee Newitz 🍜annaleen@wandering.shop
    Oct 17, 2026, 1:42 AM

    And that means any given invite to a real-life event will probably result in more people showing up in real life. Because there is just a higher density of people here. More people per hundred accounts?

    All this makes me think about how weird it is on most other platforms, where there is a lower person to account ratio.

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  • Jendia Gammonjendiagammon@wandering.shop
    Oct 17, 2026, 1:40 AM

    @annaleen I was just saying the other day how much I liked being here so much better than any other app right now. It’s truly a community. Also, several years ago, this is how I got my first short story published!

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  • Jen 🏳️‍⚧️jvw@musicians.today
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:04 AM

    @annaleen

    I hope you bring this up to some of the lovely people that made accounts, now gone dormant, on wondering.shop, who presumably moved to Bluesky

    I have bookshelves filled with own-voices science fiction and fantasy I discovered through the network of LGBTQ and POC authors in the last few years of pre-buyout Twitter

    I really miss that.

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  • Kris Freedain 🙏 🏋🏻 🍕krisfreedain@fosstodon.org
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:09 AM

    @annaleen One of the main reasons I love it over here.

    Engagement seems to have picked up in that manner in the last 5-6 months - at least for me. It's really great to see this flourish; still reminds me of the old internet is some ways - one has to go out and 'find their community' (in a good way)

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  • Annieanne@toot.cat
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:22 AM

    @annaleen

    Also it’s just easier to connect to your local community on Mastodon. It’s the hashtags maybe? I follow hashtags for my state and local city, which leads to following other local folks and local businesses, which leads to hearing about local events…

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  • Wyatt H KnottWyatt_H_Knott@mastodon.sdf.org
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:31 AM

    @anne @annaleen I heard about it here, from Anne, but I've been to events at Phoenix Books before, so I was aware of what it would be like and was willing to go-Burlington is a relatively easy place to get in and out of, there's parking, and I got there early so I had dinner at the new Jamaican place in town.

    Also, Vermont is kinda weird - I literally saw 2/3rds of my Congresspeople yesterday, Bernie was walking down Church St. and I saw Becca Balint walking on the new Parkway w/ her partner 🤣

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  • Wyatt H KnottWyatt_H_Knott@mastodon.sdf.org
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:34 AM

    @annaleen Thanks for coming to Vermont, it was a super interesting talk, and I'm halfway through the book already (it's incredibly good.) It was super cool to meet you.

    And don't worry, I'm not bothered about the scribbling!

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  • Paul_IPv6paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:40 AM

    @annaleen

    i think it's also more folks interested in what we share here. my feed tends to be heavy in folks who read very regularly, share what they read, share what they like. same for the music folks, tech folks, etc.

    so event announcements get to folks really into that kind of event and are shared with other folks with similar interests.

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  • Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏alan@mindly.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:57 AM

    @annaleen There are many factors in play, not the least of which is the effectiveness of moderation, which I find to be about two orders of magnitude more accurate and three orders of magnitude quicker. The half-life of an operative is thus vastly lower. Then there's the inability to hack an algorithm to gain visibility. "Influence" here is entirely organic. Because there's no commercial driver for growth here, this is likely to remain the case for quite some time, and I love that.

    P.S. So sad to be missing you at Can*Con; come back next year, eh? 😉

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  • Jürgen Hubertjuergen_hubert@mementomori.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 4:09 AM

    @annaleen

    These days, I've stopped using non-Fediverse platforms for marketing. I'll see how this works out when I release my third book.

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  • Shantell PowellShanmonster@c.im
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:03 AM

    @annaleen FWIW, I get a lot more people sharing links to my stories on BlueSky than I do here. I guess it depends how many authors/readers you follow.

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  • Annalee Newitz 🍜annaleen@wandering.shop
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:44 AM

    @Shanmonster I definitely have more online engagement on Bsky. But I rarely meet people at my events who say "I came because I saw it on Bluesky." They do say it about Mastodon.

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  • Johanna, CanCon varietyjohannab@cosocial.ca
    Oct 17, 2026, 4:23 AM

    @ricci @annaleen @Shanmonster One of the things about “fediverse” vs. At least the Bluesky flavour of ATmosphere is that we glom together in either geolocal or topical communities first, and the “everybody in the stadium crowd” of bsky is just streams of individuals who may connect, but seem to be broadcasting in parallel on the same firehose. It does seem to me that once an instance like wandering.shop has a digital-meatspace connectivity started, people go out to events they hear about.

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  • Johanna, CanCon varietyjohannab@cosocial.ca
    Oct 17, 2026, 3:38 PM

    @Shanmonster @ricci @annaleen oh, same here. My observation is more about the Fediverse network somehow better-fostering the connection to 3D space things when they DO happen nearby. I find either local-to-me stuff and the GO OUT to it, or if I’m traveling, I’ll choose this network to look for 3D activities to explore when I get there.

    Bsky like twitter somehow drove my 3D connections to online-only. Fediverse flipped that, I “meet” people online and then end up meeting in 3D more often.

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  • Shantell PowellShanmonster@c.im
    Oct 18, 2026, 2:20 AM

    @johannab @ricci @annaleen the only social media that kept me connected to meatspace events was Facebook, and I stopped using it several years ago. I wish I found fediverse or BlueSky even 10% as informative that way.

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  • Kristin Henry: artist. Runs vis.social.kristinHenry@vis.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:59 AM

    @annaleen When automatic noodle came out, I think I heard about it first here, and then from Noe Valley Books...but it could have been the same day?

    Anyway, I loved the event they organized for you and alex.

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  • Carlos Solíscsolisr@hub.azkware.net
    Oct 17, 2026, 4:14 AM
    Being non-commercial gives Fediverse moderators a HUGE incentive to ban accounts on sight, versus letting them be to bump the MAU metric as it happens on closed social networks. That's why nearly every non-automated account here is pretty much guaranteed to be from a genuine person
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  • AnneTheWriterAnneTheWriter1@universeodon.com
    Oct 17, 2026, 1:06 PM

    @annaleen

    It's also about the lack of ads and the lack of promoted posts.

    Your post does not get buried among ads, or bumped in favor of a dozen other rage-bait and click-bait posts that the algorithm pushes at users so they will stay on the platform, arguing with strangers and bots for hours.

    Without ads, there is no need for an artificial algorithm. Without ads, there is no need for data tracking. Without ads, there is no built-in promotion of AI slop, disinformation, rage-baiting, and click-bait posts. Without ads, trolls are not encouraged or rewarded (and therefore do not stick around in the platform).

    Without ads, the people who see your posts are the people who are genuinely interested in your posts, and they do not have to waste their time digging through mounds of slop before finding the posts they want.

    Without ads, your feed is more positive, because there is no artificial algorithm trying to rage-bait you, or to scare you, or as a way to manipulate you (to vote a certain way, or to buy anything).

    The foundational and fundamental superpower of the #Fediverse is its lack of ads.

    #Mastodon #SocialMedia #NoAlgorithms #NoAdvertising #NoAds #No_Ads

    Photo of a person walking along a street past an empty billboard covered in white paper. Graffiti on the white paper reads, "the joy of not being sold anything."
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  • Blake C. Stacey (non-boonary)bstacey@icosahedron.website
    Oct 17, 2026, 5:40 PM

    @annaleen I definitely found out about your Brookline event from your post here! (We apparently have an oddly large number of mutuals or 2-degrees-of-separation connections, but I didn't see your talk announced in the groupchats where I might have heard from them.)

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  • tootstoots@fairy.id
    Oct 17, 2026, 7:02 PM

    @annaleen every little or big success-story is good for the network! thank you

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  • JeremyJeremy@nwt.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 8:18 PM

    @annaleen @ykbooks this is another thing I should have mentioned about the fediverse. The serious book people are here.

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