14 ms·

I want to quit but there's nothing that truly replace it. I might try Mastaodon but in the meantime, I will do my job by blocking every ads I see on the app.

timmytokyo 4y ago
I was a huge Mastodon skeptic, but I made the switch a few weeks ago and it's been pretty nice, honestly. The community feels so much less toxic, and it's growing. I only hope with growth it doesn't start to replicate the rotten aspects of Twitter.
- Someone1234 4y ago
  I don't really grasp the whole instance thing. Which Mastodon instance are we meant to move for a generic experience? I typically used Twitter to @Companies.
  - wnevets 4y ago
    From what I can tell your instance choice only really matters when looking at the "local" timeline. Besides that its kind of like email, you can send and receive email from anyone that uses email if they know your address. I use the Gmail instance but I can still get and send email to Hotmail users.
    - csomar 4y ago
      I'm still confused. Which instance should I use to create my account? Does that have any future repercussions? (says, if the server stops/is offline)?
      - timmytokyo 4y ago
        If you're in doubt, try mastodon.social or masto.ai. Those are pretty "generic". Your choice does have some consequences. Each Mastodon instance has its own tailored block list, which determines which other instances are blocked in your feed. Instances also have their own codes of conduct. You can view an instance's block list and CoC by clicking the "About" link on the bottom left of the instance home page. (See https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about for example.)
        csomar 4y ago
        I'm still confused about where my account exists. In the Server? As a public/private key combination?
        simonw 4y ago
        It exists in the server, but it's possible to move to another server and keep your followers later.
        csomar 4y ago
        If the server disappears for whatever reason, do I lose my account? Is it me or is this possibly the worst design ever?
        rvz 4y ago
        > If the server disappears for whatever reason, do I lose my account? Yes you do.
        toofy 4y ago
        sure, this is pretty standard. how many apps has google shutdown? if google shuts down gmail tomorrow, you'll lose your email. theres an entire site memorializing hundreds of apps google has killed, some of them *very* popular[0] however, the creators of mastodon have made it super easy to download backups of your follows, your blocklists, etc... and you can import them on any server. so even if that were to happen, you can easily setup another account and be running again. unlike any of the closed social sites, with mastodon, if one server were to close, the network will be fine. [0]https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
        numpad0 4y ago
        It is the worst design ever, you can pick an instance and create an account there if you could trust the owner and your timeline isn’t too busy, but YMMV. UX is somewhat close to Twitter 2015, which is an upside.
      - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
        I’d suggest looking at the server list on https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org, select a few servers of interest, and then peruse what shows up as local to that server to find a good fit. Also, look for indicators of active moderation and participation in the Mastodon Server Covenant if you want to avoid toxicity. Some popular instances have been highlighted here. Finally, dont be afraid to use a throwaway email and hide behind vpn to create a temporary account on a server or two, just to check it out. Be kind to the server owners by deleting your temporary accounts, though.
      - wnevets 4y ago
        From what I can tell that is like asking which email host to sign up for but if every single email host had the same feature set. Some servers seem faster than others but I just picked a popular one from the mastodon homepage
        Tomte 4y ago
        I can take my domain name to a new mail provider. Can I have a handle like @tomte@owndomain.example at the usual Mastodon providers? (I honestly don't know)
        lokedhs 4y ago
        No. The domain part is the instance. When you migrate, your old account is set to point to the new one, and a notification is automatically sent to your followers so they can automatically follow you on the new instance.
        Tomte 4y ago
        Thanks. That's too bad, really. If your instance admin blocks you because of some spat, the functioning of the migration mechanism seems to be depending on his goodwill, right? With email, no old mail provider can stop me from being reachable under my mail address in the future.
      - fragmede 4y ago
        That's the problem with federation. It's the same thing as choosing Gmail for your email address. You pick a server and you're bound to whatever they choose to do. You then have to spend an inordinate amount of time to find one that aligns with your ideals. Or just stay on Twitter.
      - toofy 4y ago
        i would use one of the large such as mastodon.social and move on with your life. once you get a hands on understanding, you’ll probably still want to stay on a larger instance, but if you want to move to a niche, you can. the way i did it was: 1) signed up on a large instance. found a few hundred of the people i followed on twitter. 2) found that a large percentage of them were on a specific instance (infosec.exchange) 3) i didn’t have to move to that instance, at all. i could interact with them all day everyday just the same as any other other social site. i did however ultimately end up moving there because i like the admin. compared to every other social network on the planet, moving to a different server is easy. i didn’t lose any followers (people who follow you just automatically follow the new account), and importing the entire list of who i followed was super simple. most people would never ever notice the difference between servers, but if you were to for some reason need a more niche environment, there are plenty of guides out there which will hold your hand and walk you through migrating to a different server.
  - mixedmath 4y ago
    When you read "instance", think "email provider". Does it really matter if you use gmail or yahoo or protonmail or anything else? In some ways yes, but in many ways no. You can read emails from any other email provider. And if you don't like one, you can move to another.
  - culi 4y ago
    mastodon.social seems to be the closest to a "default" (though it's kinda ideologically opposed to admitting that explicitly)
  - rvz 4y ago
    > Which Mastodon instance are we meant to move for a generic experience? I typically used Twitter to @Companies. That's the problem. If you're already asking which instance to join then Mastodon is not the "replacement" you are looking for; even when discovery and moderation is worse than Twitter. If the main instance (mastodon.social) was accepting sign-ups, then that is the obvious go to. Clearly that is not the case and only I see tech people here screaming about Twitter's imminent collapse, etc, moving to whatever instance that is accepting sign ups with the majority of the 200M+ users still sitting on Twitter as they didn't bother to move to something worse. Federated echo-chambers isn't the answer for better content moderation as clearly seen by the issue with journa.host [0]. Unfortunately, centralization is the realistic approach to this which businesses and companies and hundreds of millions of (non-tech) users will continue to stick with and the platform for this is Twitter. [0] https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705 https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705
- 1270018080 4y ago
  I couldn't figure out how to find people to follow and had to quit. I was so close to ditching twitter.
  - toofy 4y ago
    there are quite a few tools to help find people you follow on twitter. for example, right now, when i run one called fedifinder[0], it finds 473 of the people i follow on twitter. when i import that list into mastodon, im now following all of their mastodon accounts. [0] https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
- chickenimprint 4y ago
  The difference in user experience reflects the difference in incentives. The lack of an obsequious welcome is as much a feature as the uncurated timeline. Mastodon is infrastructure, a tool, not a skinner box duct taped to a monstrous data combine harvester, like every other site with a profit motive has become.
holler 4y ago
Building https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im and love to have ya! Just added search and unlisted posts, more on the way.
heurist 4y ago
I think it's time to step away from social media for a while. I'll stick with Twitter as long as it delivers what I perceive as valuable insight, but in general there are better things to do, especially heading into a rough economy. Things are going to get weird anyway with these generative models capable of generating passable tweets and articles.

timmytokyo 4y ago

I was a huge Mastodon skeptic, but I made the switch a few weeks ago and it's been pretty nice, honestly. The community feels so much less toxic, and it's growing. I only hope with growth it doesn't start to replicate the rotten aspects of Twitter.

Someone1234 4y ago
I don't really grasp the whole instance thing. Which Mastodon instance are we meant to move for a generic experience? I typically used Twitter to @Companies.
- wnevets 4y ago
  From what I can tell your instance choice only really matters when looking at the "local" timeline. Besides that its kind of like email, you can send and receive email from anyone that uses email if they know your address. I use the Gmail instance but I can still get and send email to Hotmail users.
  - csomar 4y ago
    I'm still confused. Which instance should I use to create my account? Does that have any future repercussions? (says, if the server stops/is offline)?
    - timmytokyo 4y ago
      If you're in doubt, try mastodon.social or masto.ai. Those are pretty "generic". Your choice does have some consequences. Each Mastodon instance has its own tailored block list, which determines which other instances are blocked in your feed. Instances also have their own codes of conduct. You can view an instance's block list and CoC by clicking the "About" link on the bottom left of the instance home page. (See https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about for example.)
      - csomar 4y ago
        I'm still confused about where my account exists. In the Server? As a public/private key combination?
        simonw 4y ago
        It exists in the server, but it's possible to move to another server and keep your followers later.
        csomar 4y ago
        If the server disappears for whatever reason, do I lose my account? Is it me or is this possibly the worst design ever?
        rvz 4y ago
        > If the server disappears for whatever reason, do I lose my account? Yes you do.
        toofy 4y ago
        sure, this is pretty standard. how many apps has google shutdown? if google shuts down gmail tomorrow, you'll lose your email. theres an entire site memorializing hundreds of apps google has killed, some of them *very* popular[0] however, the creators of mastodon have made it super easy to download backups of your follows, your blocklists, etc... and you can import them on any server. so even if that were to happen, you can easily setup another account and be running again. unlike any of the closed social sites, with mastodon, if one server were to close, the network will be fine. [0]https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
        numpad0 4y ago
        It is the worst design ever, you can pick an instance and create an account there if you could trust the owner and your timeline isn’t too busy, but YMMV. UX is somewhat close to Twitter 2015, which is an upside.
    - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
      I’d suggest looking at the server list on https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org, select a few servers of interest, and then peruse what shows up as local to that server to find a good fit. Also, look for indicators of active moderation and participation in the Mastodon Server Covenant if you want to avoid toxicity. Some popular instances have been highlighted here. Finally, dont be afraid to use a throwaway email and hide behind vpn to create a temporary account on a server or two, just to check it out. Be kind to the server owners by deleting your temporary accounts, though.
    - wnevets 4y ago
      From what I can tell that is like asking which email host to sign up for but if every single email host had the same feature set. Some servers seem faster than others but I just picked a popular one from the mastodon homepage
      - Tomte 4y ago
        I can take my domain name to a new mail provider. Can I have a handle like @tomte@owndomain.example at the usual Mastodon providers? (I honestly don't know)
        lokedhs 4y ago
        No. The domain part is the instance. When you migrate, your old account is set to point to the new one, and a notification is automatically sent to your followers so they can automatically follow you on the new instance.
        Tomte 4y ago
        Thanks. That's too bad, really. If your instance admin blocks you because of some spat, the functioning of the migration mechanism seems to be depending on his goodwill, right? With email, no old mail provider can stop me from being reachable under my mail address in the future.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      That's the problem with federation. It's the same thing as choosing Gmail for your email address. You pick a server and you're bound to whatever they choose to do. You then have to spend an inordinate amount of time to find one that aligns with your ideals. Or just stay on Twitter.
    - toofy 4y ago
      i would use one of the large such as mastodon.social and move on with your life. once you get a hands on understanding, you’ll probably still want to stay on a larger instance, but if you want to move to a niche, you can. the way i did it was: 1) signed up on a large instance. found a few hundred of the people i followed on twitter. 2) found that a large percentage of them were on a specific instance (infosec.exchange) 3) i didn’t have to move to that instance, at all. i could interact with them all day everyday just the same as any other other social site. i did however ultimately end up moving there because i like the admin. compared to every other social network on the planet, moving to a different server is easy. i didn’t lose any followers (people who follow you just automatically follow the new account), and importing the entire list of who i followed was super simple. most people would never ever notice the difference between servers, but if you were to for some reason need a more niche environment, there are plenty of guides out there which will hold your hand and walk you through migrating to a different server.
- mixedmath 4y ago
  When you read "instance", think "email provider". Does it really matter if you use gmail or yahoo or protonmail or anything else? In some ways yes, but in many ways no. You can read emails from any other email provider. And if you don't like one, you can move to another.
- culi 4y ago
  mastodon.social seems to be the closest to a "default" (though it's kinda ideologically opposed to admitting that explicitly)
- rvz 4y ago
  > Which Mastodon instance are we meant to move for a generic experience? I typically used Twitter to @Companies. That's the problem. If you're already asking which instance to join then Mastodon is not the "replacement" you are looking for; even when discovery and moderation is worse than Twitter. If the main instance (mastodon.social) was accepting sign-ups, then that is the obvious go to. Clearly that is not the case and only I see tech people here screaming about Twitter's imminent collapse, etc, moving to whatever instance that is accepting sign ups with the majority of the 200M+ users still sitting on Twitter as they didn't bother to move to something worse. Federated echo-chambers isn't the answer for better content moderation as clearly seen by the issue with journa.host [0]. Unfortunately, centralization is the realistic approach to this which businesses and companies and hundreds of millions of (non-tech) users will continue to stick with and the platform for this is Twitter. [0] https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705 https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705
1270018080 4y ago
I couldn't figure out how to find people to follow and had to quit. I was so close to ditching twitter.
- toofy 4y ago
  there are quite a few tools to help find people you follow on twitter. for example, right now, when i run one called fedifinder[0], it finds 473 of the people i follow on twitter. when i import that list into mastodon, im now following all of their mastodon accounts. [0] https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
chickenimprint 4y ago
The difference in user experience reflects the difference in incentives. The lack of an obsequious welcome is as much a feature as the uncurated timeline. Mastodon is infrastructure, a tool, not a skinner box duct taped to a monstrous data combine harvester, like every other site with a profit motive has become.

holler 4y ago

Building https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im and love to have ya! Just added search and unlisted posts, more on the way.

heurist 4y ago

I think it's time to step away from social media for a while. I'll stick with Twitter as long as it delivers what I perceive as valuable insight, but in general there are better things to do, especially heading into a rough economy. Things are going to get weird anyway with these generative models capable of generating passable tweets and articles.