"I didn’t join Mastodon until after we launched 404 Media. I joined, frankly, because lots of people told me that we should. Mastodon had been decried by many (me, previously), as a social media platform that is too complicated or weird to sign up for. 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.
I’ve now been using it for about two months and I am here to tell you that it is, in principle, what we should want the internet to be. If you have been remotely interested in Mastodon but had reservations about joining because you thought it would be difficult, confusing, or otherwise annoying, it is not."
I've been with Mastodon for about a year and when I was reading about it, I had serious doubts because almost every person who spoke about it called it complicated. Once I finally decided to make the change, I fully expected to spend months (if not more) transitioning to the new platform. Instead, I picked a server, signed up, started following people.
@dangoodin I have to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed using Mastodon ever since I have signed up. I find everyone here extremely welcoming. I also like the fact that if you sign up for an instance, and find out that it’s not the one for you, you can just go and join another one! Not to mention the Accessibility of the third-party apps that people have created to allow people like myself who are blind in visually impaired to navigate Mastodon. It’s just completely awesome!
Beyond that, though, Mastodon is a single piece of software. I've never used it, and probably never will, and you and I are able to interact perfectly well. Because OPEN STANDARDS. And, to be frank, if we can do this with as crappy a "standard" as ActivityPub, it's all down to the openness. Imagine what we could do with a real open standard, actually developed using an open standards process, by expert implementors, like, say, XMPP! :-)
@woody@dangoodin There’s a potential path for that when all others are enshittification, too. I love Mastodon, but I think it is not buzzy enough for some people. It lacks the amplification and meme power of other previous social media, and that makes it seem less interesting.
@glennf@woody@dangoodin good. Let the people who thrive on "buzz", hype, faux outrage, "parasocial relationships", and other meaningless dross stay elsewhere.
“. . . I will just point out that Threads is still not interoperable with the continent of Europe for reasons of ‘it’s illegal there because of Facebook’s privacy practices’ and thus I’m not holding my breath.”
I haven't even looked at who you are, what you stand for, or anything else.
But, posts like this both open the doors for civil conversation, and show why the "no algorithm but your own brain" is THE only approach that can work.
Be sure to stress to others that, if you are able to, you should donate to your favorite instance.
More often than not, the crew (or human) running your instance is not getting paid to do so.
This is the work that just might bring the world together.
@dangoodin It's a good article. But the author doesn't link to his account from his 404 Media bio, which I think probably says something about attitudes towards Mastodon generally.
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