From Twitter to Mastodon – a pleasant migration
I recently fully switched from Twitter to Mastodon. It was surprisingly simple, and pleasant!
I previously wrote about my thoughts on a post-Twitter world. This week, I made some adjustments.
I was previously skeptical of Mastodon as a Twitter replacement, not helped by being confused about its distributed nature, and the dearth of servers that were open for user registration.
However, after finally signing up (I am here: @wfaler@mastodon.social), I was happily surprised: The latest Twitter-missteps seems to have sent over a critical mass of people to Mastodon. Use is pretty familiar to Twitter, and finding people across servers is simple. Using tools such as FediFinder & Debirdify allowed me to quickly hundreds of familiar people from Twitter who had Mastodon accounts. To give an idea of the scale, over a quarter of a million people migrated to Mastodon in one day on November 18th!
(picture courtesy of @Mastodonmigration)
There is also definite feel of 2012 Twitter on Mastodon: engagement is higher, conversations better quality, and discourse more civil. It might be a honeymoon period before the trolls find themselves there too, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
Why leave Twitter?
Personally, I have cleaned my Twitter timeline & DMs, left a message pointing to my Mastodon location. There are a few reasons for this:
I do not condone of the Elon way of handling the transition. Lay-offs may be necessary, even big ones. But they have largely been handled entirely without class or ethics. In fact, some behaviour stink of a psychopath seeing how high he can make people jump, just to assert control over people.
Forget about class & ethics. The changes also seem to be made entirely without plan or greater thought, alienating advertisers and likely causing revenue to crater. There has to be questions over whether Twitter will be viable as an ongoing concern without further major capital injections.
Reinstating people like Donald Trump (who previously used the site to incite violence & an insurrection), and stopping policing of certain types of hate-speech does not sit well with me. I consider myself somewhat of a Free Speech absolutist, but like most sane people, I do not consider threats or incitement to violence to go under Free Speech.
Twitters platform algorithm has for the last few years optimized for outrage, not for meaningful conversations. This has meant that where you once asked questions and got insightful answers, these days, you are met by crickets.
Finally, the migration to Mastodon was simple and painless!
In summary, I do not condone the classless & clueless management techniques of the new leadership, I am not convinced of Twitters future viability, and I do not condone of the new content policies. I also have reservations of the social media model of users being the product. The conclusion of this is, I have no interest in supporting Twitters “active users”- or “engagement” statistics in any shape or form.
What’s next?
I loved Twitter as a platform for 14 years. It’s the only social media that ever really stuck for me. I’ve made lifelong friends there. I’ve got business and jobs from Twitter. But lately, it has soured for the above reasons.
Social media will probably never be the same. Twitter WAS the town square of online discourse. Nothing will ever be able to replace it. But Twitter as we know it is now dead.
I will try my hand at Mastodon. I’ve also found myself commenting more on Hacker News lately, engaging in private Slacks & Discords. Twitter will not be replaced by a single platform (though Mastodon will no doubt be the closest), but rather a handful of different ones. Maybe this is for the better: more specialization should likely lead to deeper, more meaningful conversations.
This will benefit us all: taking a step away from outrage towards civil, deeper discourse will improve us all.
You can find me on Mastodon at @wfaler@mastodon.social