Curmudgeon @Curmudgeon@qoto.org

I don’t understand why people think Mastodon is difficult. It seems pretty straightforward, and the separate servers are no biggie. I’m enjoying this fresh start here, like moving to a new apartment!

Social networks need critical mass to sustain themselves.

Part of that is making sure this site has that critical mass by encouraging folks to come here.

Part of that is making sure bird site isn't a place where you provide free content anymore.

There's a good chance when you joined here, you cared more about the first of those as a hedge against bird site dying.

But if recent changes mean you want birdsite to affirmatively die, you'll need to do both.

#NoFreeContentForFascists

"What I’m finding most satisfying about Mastodon, and I’m seeing a lot of other journalists feel this, is that it actually forces you to ask and confront some of these questions and to make active choices. Even if Mastodon were to remain Twitter’s very tiny stepbrother, I would still like to be part of a Mastodon journalist community because I think we got lazy as a field, and we let Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and, god help us, Elon Musk and their staff decide...'

—@adamdavidson

@buitengebieden sander!

Every week I publish a "Linkfest" -- old-school linkblogging, where I round up the most fascinating stuff I found in a week of surfing the intertubes

The latest Linkfest just dropped: https://clivethompson.medium.com/an-edible-drone-long-social-distancing-and-a-psychiatric-evaluation-of-star-wars-characters-510287d8a706

Even if, as looks likely, Cortez-Masto pulls off the win in NV, giving Dems Senate control, the Georgia runoff will be a critical race to win;
1. Keeping unfit moron Herschel Walker out of the Senate
2. Further humiliating Trump
3. And mostly, because 2024 is going to be a very tough Senate map for Dems, and every sitting Senator will count.
GA is never irrelevant!

I did a little comparison: reach and reaction on Twitter and Mastodon.

I picked a subject typical of my feed and reworded it to be more native to Mastodon. Same link, issue, people, tone.

With 309 K followers on Twitter it got 81 shares and 179 likes

With 8.5 K followers on Mastodon: 123 shares and 195 likes.

Here are the two posts:

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1591147769229557761 [305K followers, 81 shares, 179 likes]

https://mastodon.social/@jayrosen_nyu/109326807884220104 [8.5K followers, 123 RT, 195 likes]

Amazing #twitter

“Being ok with sucking at something while learning” is an extremely undervalued skill.
As is “being happy for people that are better than you”.
Super important for
- learning how to code
- learning a new language
- art, music, podcasting, cooking
- really everything.
Don’t forget to teach your kids these skills.
Also, demonstrate these behaviors.
Let your kids see you being bad at something and not giving up and staying positive.

For my part, I've always seen them as something at the discretion of the author. As the reader, you have a plethora of tools to disengage from unwanted content on Mastodon—with even better filters coming in 4.0—and harassment is not one of them. People who are arriving now have as much right to be here and bring their own culture as the ones who came before them.