I moved to Mastodon, and I’m more than happy there.
Post about ugly capitalism, evil organisations and going back to old days.
Twitter was good, for a time
Twitter for me was both niche and mainstream. Niche because almost none of my friends have account there, mainstream because this is where most of the politicians, IT influencers and „people-worth-following” were posting.
And it was good, for a time.
Sure it had some problems with trolls and slurs everywhere, but hey, this is the ugly side of public place with semi-anonymity.
Moving out
When it was announced the notorious troll, Mr. Rich, is going to buy Twitter, I thought it might be little crazier, but the reality outperformed anything I could imagine.
I was about to stay there for a while to see what life brings, when I realised this is the kind of corporation that you can’t really rely your internet persona on. The ban out of nowhere of Manuel Matuzovic’s account, with no way for him to solve, was a big red signal to think about some better place. Somewhere where you can talk to humans if things go wrong or at least get your stuff and move out when they stop liking you.
Manuel’s departure also helped me to reactivate my Mastodon’s account because others followed him and I finally had some content to consume there. Before I only had a feed of the Mastodon’s main maintainer cat photos.
Moving out forever
Once Mr. Rich bought Twitter it was the time to prepare some popcorn and watch some dramas and stunt actions.
It was supposed to be a comedy, turned out to be a horror.
Instead of a bunch of stand-upers we have a Batman movie with Elon taking the role of Bane to take over the city and destroy it.
Hostility of the owner towards the employees, unheard in Europe breaking of the written and unwritten rules, management chaos and general „asshole” image of the guy who’s now Twitter’s dictator is way too much for me.
There is something I repeat to my Polish friends and family regarding abortion laws in Poland: if you don’t agree with that, stop supporting Polish Catholic Church (that is a political client and main lobbyist for it), stop going there, stop talking with them, stop giving them money, terminate all your relations with them. Any relation with an evil organisation, that does evil things, means supporting everything they do: the good and the bad. Even if it’s not your intention, they will use you to justify all their actions.
Same translates to Twitter now. Being active there, makes their KPIs look good, which makes all they do justified and good-looking from their and their sponsors perspective.
Every single time I open Twitter app I feel ashamed that I give that bump in their stats of monthly active users, interactions and so on. I give my vote to them. And I hate it.
I feel ashamed because I don’t agree with everything their management is doing there at the moment. Ignoring labour laws, introducing even more chaos and toxicity and last but not least: embracing an asshole.
Still, it’s not easy to stop.
Some big accounts are only there and I understand they have no interest encouraging people to move out.
Some military experts are only there with their news and analysis on Ukraine efforts to de-occupy their land. They have little knowledge about what’s happening on that website, they're busy with their stuff.
All the brands, big organisations, political parties - they have no idea how to operate on Mastodon, and it will take some time until they make some sense out ot it.
But they will eventually move out too. If the audience shrinks.
Mastodon
When I finally decided to pack my toys and change the playground it was like a time machine journey.
Suddenly I landed in a place I knew already. Was different UI and different people, but essentially I’m in 2010 in some sort of mix of forum run on PHPBB by Przemo and public chat website and all of this talks to every other forum/chat I don’t even know.
People are nice and interesting, topics are meaningful and most importantly - zero trolls.
Just as on Twitter, I split my internet persona into two:
- professional one where I try posting mostly about IT, in English
- private one where I mostly post in Polish about politics and random stuff
After being there for about 2 weeks I have no intention to abandon it any time soon. Apps are great, communities are great and I really enjoy spending time in those two bubbles.
If you want to read more about this topic, please continue on next post about Mastodon.