Ask HN: How many are switching to Mastodon?

I do eventually intend to (at least mostly) wind down my use of all "walled garden" sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc., but I will probably do so gradually. And I may leave the accounts open and populated with a bot that periodically posts a reminder of where I can be found, or something. Not sure yet.

As for Mastadon, I like the idea and even thought about spinning up a few instances but I really don't do social media beyond HN so I expect even the chirping crickets would bail on me.

I never was an IRC user, I'm from what I term the "vBulletin era". Folks were super adamant I shouldn't be writing malware, building botnets, or siphoning up large swathes of credit cards and selling them to the Russians... but then they'd never connect me with anything except a PhD, the FBI, the CIA, or some other... agency.

That sort of annoying obstructionism is why I bounced around a lot in my 20s, then loudly declared they're gonna nuke DC, not Pittsburgh, and moved back to 412.

Anyways, I can't tell you how Mastadon is, socially. But I can tell you that the folks who were on Twitter when I joined it with the pormanteau of my first and last name I also stupidly used on a video game forum when I was 11ish to ask for help... I thought we were all on the same page about not showing up in what was obviously a public facing account and interacting in the same way you would on Facebook, which was, at least for me, always a walled garden -- I'd blocked a few family members and the intent was nothing went out to the public internet, as well as quite obviously a personal account.

Anyways, the short version is if you just want to have technical discussions, I've heard it's decent, but I have no idea how they navigate the ever present issue in online communities of sea lions[1] who have the same interactions over and over, waiting for you to respond in a way that gives them more cause to complain.

Like, at one point this week someone knocked on my door, and I had to politely remind them I'd asked them not to come into my apartment building without permission, then I wanted to say how about I throw you out the window if being politely asked not to come in here doesn't work... but despite that being a perfectly legal thing to say to someone who is trespassing -- or to just do it -- to just grab someone, throw them down the stairs, then throw them straight out the back door, possibly injuring or killing them along the way.

There's a type of person, on Twitter, who reads stuff like the above then has an absolute fit if told well gee, if reading something dontbenebby posted on Twitter scared you then... don't.

I guess I could file an appeal or something, but this has been a problem all they way back to when the folks who'd make a show of not giving you detention for standing up for yourself as they stat raped their way across the county... someone obtains an unpaid volunteer position they're only energized enough to do because they're a privlidged white man (or woman) -- then abused their access to that position to keep folks from expressing ideas they don't like.

(And I know that sounds Qanon-y -- I'm talking about ideas like "I'm not a communist, I'd be part of one of the largest political parties in a country like Germany and conflating the two is fascist".)

Anyways TLDR: Mastadon might be cool, but it might be better to just lurk for a bit OP

And yes, I imagine there are some people who resent Musk's takeover of Twitter yet who would welcome Trump's return. But I can't think of anyone who would fall into that category.

Personally I'm interested to see what happens at Twitter with Elon at the helm.

A friend and active Twitter user who lets say isn't a fan of his, has stated that they don't think he'd be foolish enough to burn it to the ground and thus won't be going anywhere. I agree.

I also just made it on mstdn.social, but probably I should have applied into one of the more specialist fedi-thingies. I dunno.

Should be interesting to see how it all shakes down.

Personally what I want is an alternative to Facebook.

I’m not jumping ship; I’m taking a wait and see attitude.

I did signup for Jack Dorsey’s new social network: https://blueskyweb.xyz

I’ve had Mastodon account for while but I’ve haven’t used it much, but that may change…

site:twitter.com financialization of the economy

Yup, still a useless pile of garbage, full of one-liners, silly memes, links to corporate media articles that aren't worth reading because you already know what PR message they'll be putting out, etc. Best thing that could happen would be for Musk to buy it and then just pull the plug, although that seems fairly unlikely.

I noticed this a little while ago. If I tweet now noone ever replies, unless the tweet is a response to a popular tweet. I have over 3000 'followers' and suddenly noone is interested in what I have to say? Maybe I got dull

I've tried Mastodon a few times, but it never seems to stick. I don't know anyone irl on it, or even any accounts that focus much on my local area. I think federation is interesting, but I think it'd work better if individuals had a close affinity with a particular community that chose to maintain a server (like a town, university, church, volunteer organization, etc). As it stands, people try to use it as a clumsy Twitter and join random servers they know little about.

The best thing that would come out of this is that I break my Twitter habit and hang out with friends at the pub more often.