That's not really true. When it first came out, before the ads, before the algorithm, when they embraced 3rd party apps with an open api, it was really great. It was full of techy personalities and interesting folks. Hashtags were fun to follow, live events were amazing in real time, so much more. That was before it got inundated with politics and celebrities though. I think that honeymoon phase only lasted a tiny while, then it all went downhill into the outrage machine pretty quickly. But for a quick minute there, it was glorious.
Twitter was also an important tool for journalists and researchers worldwide. Military targets have come from Twitter posts. It is a reflection of a huge chunk of society. You may as well call all of internet technology "just a porn box" for how wildly over generalized that statement is. The reality is your generalization comes from arrogance. "I never engaged in such frivolous behavior". You're here now. Yes you have and yes you do.
Even your comment is the first cousin of outrage, it's pure disdain. Nothing more or less, and exactly as valuable as outrage.
The interesting thing about Twitter is how it shows how a significant part of our society works. It is kind of about amplifying fame and suggesting that we should all cares about meaningless 240 character posts or what these guys think.
That news media types love Twitter is kind of an indictment of how news works.
Don't get the official app, get Tusky. Then look under "federated" and follow the people you like. You can also search for a particular topic and follow that topic instead.
I second following hashtags when you first start out on Mastodon. It's probably the best method of discovery right now, since there is no algorithm feeding you constantly.
I’ve never understood exactly what people get out of Twitter, and don’t understand why you’d need an alternative? Why not just use Lemmy as your alternative?
Twitter is for those that either want to be the one that people follow or those that want to follow the one. It is about fame and groupies. If your not in one of those groups you will not see value. I am not so I see no value.
The above is why there is not Twitter substitute for most Twitter users. Exception is if Blue or Threads takes off.
News and updates from specific companies/projects/people.
How people always fail to see the usefulness of the platform amazes me. There is nothing else like it for that purpose, moving elsewhere is difficult if all the accounts you are interested in are not also moving there.
News and updates from specific companies/projects/people
So let's say I'm interested in tech. I got my news and updates from tech oriented websites/blogs, with the added benefits of tutorials and other articles also posted there, why would I want to use twitter?
Exactly, if you block enough and follow the right people the twitter feed is a pretty good place to get news and content. Hard to get that on mastodon since, well... no algorithm to actually show these things to you, no people to actually follow and no time to read everything chronologically.
Its definitely a lot worse now, but at its peak twitter algorithm worked pretty well, not that I ever used it, always did the standard chronological, but I wasn't following 100s of accounts anyway.
Had to setup RSS again now, but its not the same as it used to be, harder to find decent blogs with the news/updates I want that support RSS.
Not everyone is on twitter for the political bullshit. Using banned words it’s easy to filter any political garbage. Twitter is quite useful. But I’m not there to convince or push my ideology on a bunch of polarized people. What a waste of energy.
If you like Mastodon but miss that Twitter layout, I’d suggest looking up Elk. It’s a web client version which can be installed, I’m very impressed so far.
Mastodon. Seems like the logical choice, considering you’re already on the fediverse, and a lot of people already moved to Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter.
People, yes. Tags, not directly but if you follow kbin magazines most have related tags attached and you'll get microblog content matching those tags in your feed.
Sorry but that is a farcical expectation. All sites will have rules about what can and cannot be posted and will have to follow the laws of the country the server is based in.
Nothing, because I never had a use for Twitter in the first place.
But the obvious fediverse alternative would be Mastodon. Decentralized, open source and you can use it even to communicate with kbin.
I tried out Mastodon last November and it was the perfect alternative for me. Connecting with more interesting people each week and I am loving the experience still to this day.
I have several friends that still use Twitter but discord has been the solution to keep in touch. Haven’t been able to delete my accounts yet.
I'm curious: why are you using Mastodon when you're a kbin user already? Why not just use the microblogging aspect of kbin? It's even federated with Mastodon!
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