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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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'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!
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.
I want to move to bluesky so bad but I just can't get a damn invite. I applied via email months ago. This is their moment & I kinda feel like the invite system is holding them back. (But I do understand why it was implemented.)
Edit: omg you guys are so sweet. I only just started using this place but I'm sold. You're awesome!
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.
Akkoma, I can log into it on my iPhone 2G, my PowerMac G5 and so on, Mastodon is shit, Calckey was good until it rebranded to Firefish and now it feels like it's owned by a corporate entity
There are different levels of censorship: some imposed by the law, and others by tech giant companies (such as Twitter, or X). I can tolerate the former, but why should we tolerate the latter??
@woshang I got kicked off Twit years ago. Once Elon took over and let loose the Putinistas and authoritarians, there was no reason to go back to that cesspool of hate and misinformation
I've had a Mastodon account since 2018, but I officially moved from twitter last year. I also have a firefish/calckey account and and akkoma one.
I prefer Firefish. Its features allow me to use it as a mix of twitter and tumblr. For something extrictly twitter-like, I'll go for Akkoma as I find Mastodon to be lacking some important characteristics and its minimalistic design to be uninviting.
#kbin which is like reddit + twitter. Somethings I post as threads (like reddit) some things I post as posts (like twitter). Then I hop between the two when reading. Posts fall under microblogs and federates with Mastodon. So it is like having thing I need in one account.
I hated its UI requiring Javascript first so that registered my account on kbin.social. But I became to have liked Mastodon after noticing that it has API which we can use without Javascript. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/
In particular, its trends API is f*cking nice! I could get trend tags and links with curl or the like, required parsing json somehow though. It would be perfect if it could filter by my non-english language...
$ curl https://mastodon.social/api/v1/trends/links?limit=20
<...parsing somehow...>
Tesla’s secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/
Archive of Our Own Survived a Cyberattack, But Will It Survive Congress?
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/kids-online-safety-act-lgbtq-youth
Vivaldi, Mozilla raise alarms over Google's proposed 'DRM for the Web'
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2009730/vivaldi-mozilla-warn-of-googles-proposed-drm-for-the-web.html
Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/25/texas-a-m-professor-opioids-dan-patrick/
Twitter Deletes Fact-Check Of Musk Connecting Bronny James’ Cardiac Arrest To Covid Vaccine
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/07/25/twitter-deletes-fact-check-of-musk-connecting-bronny-james-cardiac-arrest-to-covid-vaccine/
Fatigue Is So Much More Than Being Tired
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/07/chronic-fatigue-long-covid-symptoms/674834/
Twitter commandeers @X username from man who had it since 2007
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/twitter-took-x-handle-from-longtime-user-and-only-offered-him-some-merch/
Elon Musk takes @x handle from its original user. He got zero dollars for it.
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-take-x-handle-from-original-user
Angela Davis on Racial Reckoning: 'Diversity and Inclusion Without Radical Change Accomplishes Nothing'
https://jezebel.com/angela-davis-on-racial-reckoning-diversity-and-inclusi-1844853369
The ChatGPT revolution is another tech fantasy
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-chatgpt-revolution-is-another
Twitter becomes X
https://www.platformer.news/p/twitter-becomes-x
‘Stop calling it Twitter’ says guy who deadnames his own child
https://chaser.com.au/general-news/stop-calling-it-twitter-says-guy-who-deadnames-his-own-child/
2 Teachers Exposed Far-Right Activities At Their German School. They Had To Leave Town.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/germany-far-right-teachers-school_n_64c0fb92e4b0df86321252f5
Opinion | What’s Happening in Giorgia Meloni’s Italy Is Scary
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/opinion/meloni-italy-washington-visit.html
How the Ultrawealthy Use Private Foundations to Bank Millions in Tax Deductions While Giving the Public Little in Return
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-private-nonprofits-ultrawealthy-tax-deductions-museums-foundation-art
“We’ve Changed the Game”: Teamsters Win Historic UPS Contract
https://teamster.org/2023/07/weve-changed-the-game-teamsters-win-historic-ups-contract/
Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
https://stackdiary.com/web-environment-integrity/
Congress is About to Pass a Very Bad Internet Bill. Here's How You Can Stop It.
https://www.readtpa.com/p/congress-is-about-to-pass-a-very
Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back
https://www.openculture.com/2023/07/home-taping-is-killing-music-when-the-music-industry-waged-war-on-the-cassette-tape.html
Saguaro cacti collapsing in Arizona extreme heat, scientist says
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/saguaro-cacti-collapsing-arizona-extreme-heat-scientist-says-2023-07-25/
Hard pass on that. Also 100% censorship resistance sounds good at face value until you realize that can easily be construed to mean that nazis are free to run wild there.
The fact it requires a specific piece of software, even on desktop, puts it one step from (old) Twitter to me.
Even things like Discord - while very much not the same in other ways - has a web version that runs in a browser. Ditto the early 00's instant messaging apps.
Also, the decentralisation seems to all be under the control of the one company(?). They say "no single entity controlling it" but there's not much further detail. I might be mistaken, but it doesn't seem like the Fediverse's version of decentralisation, at least at first glance.
Moving further(?) into tinfoil hat territory: The founder's name is very similar to that of a late Reddit founder, which is worth a double-take. Funny coincidence? Fake name? Either way might be playing on the coincidence? etc. etc. Hard to tell. Dude's probably legit, right?
b) A few of the web links for it were in Chinese, but that's probably a red herring. Translation suggests people in China are using it to get around certain internet issues.