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I wrote about my first two months on Mastodon. I was a Mastodon hater because I thought it would be weird, complicated, or dead. It's been none of those things. I'm ashamed I didn't join earlier and I'm ashamed I haven't been telling people to join it, because it's a version of the internet and social media I've long advocated for with my reporting: decentralized, portable, user controlled, not corporate: 72 comments
@Lazarou @jasonkoebler it's funny on the other socials if I got some notifications I was filled with feelings of dread. Like oh no what went wrong. Here it's like oh good, positive healthy interactions and affirmation from others. Long may it stay positive.  @krupo @jasonkoebler absolutely, my family have noticed the difference in me since coming to Mastodon. @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social You're right, of course. The luster will disappear from Threads and Bluesky as soon as they start to enshittify them, as they inevitably will.  Thank you for this. Another benefit is you can set up your own instance! More complicated, yes, but it could ease the fear of uncertainty for larger companies. It would be great if media companies, who are 'afraid to leave the bird, considered this as an option. โ๏ธ  > I had also convinced myself that people on Mastodon would be mad at me if I made jokes, which has (mostly) not been the case. @jasonkoebler if anything, Mastodon needs more shitposting. Please continue!  "I am going to move on with my life. But letโs say that I didnโt want to, and wanted to die on this goatse hill." ๐ @jasonkoebler couldn't agree more. Helping people get onto a server is the best way to reduce friction for those you encourage to join IMO. Curious to see what a Mozilla server will mean for the ecosystem. Hopefully every other platform is pushed towards interoperability. Also some really cool experiments happening around community governance and moderation like this: https://cosocial.ca/about @monkeyflower this is cool. honestly, Elk.Zone, which makes Mastodon look like Twitter, helped me a lot. Also has easy account switching, which is key because I am running the 404 Media Mastodon as well. The thing I've realized is I can start using the more complicated features as I naturally learn about them, if I want to. Or I can just not. @jasonkoebler if you used tweetdeck before you might also like the extended web view of mastodon  @thierna @jasonkoebler I used the Old TweetDeck on Twitter before Musk killed it. It was great. Mastodon's UI is awful - it's like if it was designed by someone who looked at TweetDeck once but never actually used it. There is also MastoDeck but it, too, is nothing like what the Old TweetDeck was. @bontchev @thierna @jasonkoebler Have you tried the Ivory client? For me it is an even better Mastodon version of the legacy Tweetbot (same development team).  @jasonkoebler @monkeyflower Iโm glad elk worked for you. For me @tootapp was the answer. It was a great phone app that made using the fedi and mastodon fun but offered a lot of the power and features that I wanted. And the server wheel is great for both multiple accounts or just watching the local feed of another instance. Thereโs so many great tools for the fediverse that are out there to make the UI experience what you want.  @jasonkoebler @monkeyflower Funny you should say that Elk looks like Twitter. I don't see that, just that it looks good and well organized, easy to find my way around. @jasonkoebler oh cool i haven't tried that app. Love having options! I've been using @megalodon on Android because of the clean beautiful UX and @apps to play with some more advanced features. Have been exploring bunch of desktop apps but haven't landed on one yet that i love.  @monkeyflower I would recommend checking out @phanpy. I use it on the desktop and as a Progressive Web App on mobile.    I didn't want to withhold this look at the fediverse from you. Thanks for your kind experience. @jasonkoebler I donโt think you should be ashamed. Everything is a spectrum and there are a lot of things that have changed/improved in the past year relative to the infrastructure of Mastodon, clients, and chiefly โ for me and a number of peersโ the interop between Mastodon/AP and WordPress. Conditions also had to significantly degrade to push folks like me away from Twitter for good, because itโs where the bulk of the WordPress community still congregates digitally.  @jasonkoebler this is a really nice and refreshing article. Just one thing that many people are confused about, when you move servers, you can take your social graph with you, but not your posts. There are workarounds like RT the old content from the new account but there's no straightforward way of moving content between servers. Just in case you actually need to migrate.  @jasonkoebler I've never engaged or experienced engagement on even closer to the same level on any other social media. I think the chronological algorithm and ability to block entire instances is a huge advantage. It makes it a lot easier to avoid trolls. I only really have meaningful discussions here. I don't have to waste energy arguing with people I know are wrong or are acting in bad faith. @jasonkoebler Ouch. I had to enter Reader View on Firefox to make that article bearable and readable. Monospaced fonts used for programming and white text on black backgrounds plus huge cluttered neon colored images are for geeks only hurt my eyes and I'm not even 50 yet! I can't reshare it that way but congrats being converted to Masto. @onreact fwiw, this is pretty mean and the kind of thing I was talking about when I said I mostly havenโt experienced this sort of thing on mastodon, and the kind of thing I was worried about when coming here @jasonkoebler You could also say "thank you for the feedback" as I have almost 25 years experience in building and optimizing websites. No need to get personally offended. Just don't give people migraines with your website.  That was indeed mean Tad. The 404 site has a style of its own and needs to stand out in the crowd. There is a css switch to turn it into black text on white. These people put their future on the line going independent. Yes you wouldnโt have designed it like that but the last thing we need is all the websites looking the same.   Don't worry about being ashamed, as with any service you need to be there for some time to really get a feel for the place. What you can do is give people your well informed view on the fediverse and Mastodon, this is far better than trying to advocate something you are very new to. Keep up the good work and hopefully your friends and acquaintances will join too.  @jasonkoebler the cool thing about community-owned technology like ActivityPub and Mastodon is you donโt have to join right away if you donโt want to. We arenโt going anywhere and the golden age will only last longer. Whenever a new user is ready we will be here with room to spare.  @jasonkoebler Wow, I wrote something about being happy here earlier too ๐ @jasonkoebler The link to your profile (with the text "join Mastodon") on that article is broken, btw. Looks like a missing protocol in the href.  @jasonkoebler Thank you for this. I'm frustrated by so many people counting on Bluesky to be the new Twitter. Short-sighted.  @jasonkoebler great piece. Thanks for sharing, and more importantly, thank you for your excellent work on @404mediaco!   @jasonkoebler Mastodon's user interface is awful and it's basically dead compared to the stream of content I had on Twitter. It's only saving grace is that Twitter's current user interface is even worse, to the point of being totally unusable. Basically, Mastodon is not good but is currently the least bad one of the bunch.  @jasonkoebler I just added it to my list of articles to read but, in the meantime, let me tell you that you could like Diaspora* too. @jasonkoebler This is an excellent example of viral mastodon clickbait. And also, I agree with it. Welcome to the fediverse! I'm enjoying the podcast, and I'm considering subscribing to 404. @jasonkoebler I love hearing from accounts that were small on Twitter about how much more engagement they get here. I've heard this from large accounts also. When I did an autopsy on my, albeit also small, account on Twitter, I realized followers I had (a few thousand) were mostly bots, brands, inactive accounts, and very few real people. Anyway, welcome. :) :) :)  @jasonkoebler Good article, but small correction: you would not, in fact, keep all of your posts when moving servers - they would remain on the server they were posted on, for various protocol reasons. I believe there's ongoing work to make this possible, but its not an easy task, unfortunately. @jasonkoebler  @jasonkoebler a quick note, there's a link to your Mastodon account on that post, but it takes you to a 404 on 404's site. Here is the link in the article https://www.404media.co/mastodon-is-the-good-one/mastodon.social/@jasonkoebler/   @jasonkoebler thank you! The next question is, why do people insist on hanging on to the worst moments for mastodon and keeping those frozen in time and always in play, while simultaneously excusing and justifying the worst moments for all other platforms? tbh I think this is gonna require an anti capitalist & media ecosystem critique, laborious but there is a story there worth examining and yet no one really doesโฆ  @jasonkoebler  @jasonkoebler It's not easy to admit when you were wrong, but it's the right thing to do. You're very welcome here on Mastodon.  @jasonkoebler I think it would be fair to say that Mastodon is actually both weird and complicated, but also still the best social network option at the moment.  @jasonkoebler > "Federated networks like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Metaโs Threads" The only one of those that is federated is Mastodon. Bluesky and Meta are not federated, full stop. That's vaporware. I frankly don't believe they will ever federate in any meaningful way, but certainly the onus is on them to prove it by doing it. Instead, journalists keep just taking their press releases at their word.  @jwz @jasonkoebler @jasonkoebler I have been here a few months, now, and still don't feel I have settled into it properly. That might be more my fault... I can't work out why, but there is something about the other place that makes people engage, despite the shitfest Musk is making of it. Glad you discarded the dumpster fire once known as Twitter. Yep, you were late - but a lot of people are still BAU over there, as if providing regular content to Trump apologist Musk, is a-Ok. @jasonkoebler Jason, I'm glad to see this turnaround for you, but it has been massively disheartening to see people like you be "haters" of stuff they'd never used. Or the idea that people who report on technical things for a living were so intimidated by a web interface or sign-up process that they tried to drive others away from doing it. It makes me wonder how complicit the tech media is in what has happened to us with behemoth social networks in the first place. @jasonkoebler (also, no one I know has ever said Threads is the best thing. I'm really curious, genuinely, who is saying that and what you mean.) @jasonkoebler it almost felt like it was the cool kids club tech journalist thing to do to hate on Mastodon with out giving it a chance. Not saying this is you especially giving it months not days or hours before judgement. @cazool I think that on twitter (old twitter) there was a belief that anything remotely edgy would be put behind a content warning and youโd be chastised by pedants for posting crimes real and perceived. There has been some of that here but not nearly as much as I was originally led to believe, and almost everyone has been very very nice @jasonkoebler that is a good point. I stopped posting and only followed select people long ago on Twitter. Jumped into Mastodon and started interacting right away and got to feel the difference. Also helped it has no impact on my job. From my side with that not being an experience focusing on selecting an instance felt like an easy scapegoat. Instead it could have been an opportunity to educate those that didnโt experience the IRC/ICQ/Trillium/etc days.  @jasonkoebler Fucking LOL on that meme usage! Thanks for the laugh! :blobfoxcrylaugh: :neocat_laugh_tears: :neofox_laugh_tears: For your penance you will draw a map of all instances federating and not federating with each other, and explain it simply to your readers. |
Gregory's Server
@jasonkoebler Mastodon is a social network for human beings to be human.