I'd like to talk a bit about why 1) image descriptions on Fedi are so great, and 2) why I sometimes reply to people's posts with a description of the image they posted without one. I was worried the latter might come across as passive aggressive, hence this explainy-post. This was originally a series of toots, but it got too long, so it's over here. Also, I want to be able to find it again, ever.

(This post is intended for an audience of people using Mastodon or other Fedi clients, but most of it also applies to image descriptions on the internet in general.)

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Today I held a microscope party, with luck the first of many. It was simply this: My wife and I happen to have several microscopes, most people don't, and microscopes are fun. I invited over a bunch of people and gave suggestions on objects to bring. It was a blast, and if you or a friend happen to be equipped to do so, I can heartily recommend holding such a party yourself.

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There is a fundamental tension when designing social media software with a focus on privacy: The more posts are set to friends-only access, the harder a time the network will have in gaining adoption.

Since social media to a large extent lives and dies by network effects, some combination of these are necessary to grow the network beyond a critical threshold and keep it lively. It must also stay reasonably competitive with other social media systems in attracting users. There are many reasons a person might choose to 1) create an account and 2) "friend" other users rather than sticking with what they already have:

• Being encouraged to by their existing friends
• To see what all the fuss is about (if it's in the news)
• By seeing interesting posts by people they may or may not know

Privacy-positive social media software is by default at a disadvantage in the last category. How can it be made competitive with the likes of Twitter and Facebook without compromising on values? In this post, I consider the notion of "socially local privacy" as a partial solution to the discovery problem.

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