To Mastodon, from Jaiku

Twitter was bought by an individual that many of us do not trust, and we fear that it may no longer represent the values that we cherish. That Twitter is bought is nothing new. Myspace was bought by Murdoch, many years ago. Jaiku was a great competitor to twitter but it was bought by Google to become Google+. Eventually Google sunset Google+ and we were left with identi.ca but that soon fell flat.

Mastodon is just another attempt to get the same type of community as Twitter managed to find, but distributed across a multitude of instances that do not always say yes, and that do not always show everyone’s every tweet. Add to this that they’re smaller, so policy depends on one or two individuals in some cases, rather than a team.

Through Mastodon people are discovering what Twitter was like when it was still an alpha, beta and other stages. They are discovering why we enjoyed being part of that smaller, more personal community. I am not hooked to Mastodon yet. I haven’t found a worthwhile community yet. It still feels like talking to a small group of strangers rather than a group of friends.

I currently play with two accounts, one anonymous, and one with my name. I used to feel comfortable posting as myself but with the pandemic I prefer to protect how I post. I also don’t have the warm friendships and constant in person meetings that I had with Twitter people. Whether you know people or not, in person, does affect how you behave online.

Twitter hasn’t imploded yet and people haven’t migrated to other networks. Mastodon will grow. The question is how fast, and whether people from other networks will come through and recreate their networks.

I saw one plugin that allows people to important their twitter friends. The best way to migrate friends is via e-mails that are hashed, and compared.

Time to see what happens.