Teri:
One of my reasons for choosing Mastodon over Post was that unlike Post, Mastodon is not owned by anyone, and therefore cannot be purchased. For years to come, Elon Musk’s purchase and demise of Twitter will be studied at MBA schools as a bad example of corporate leadership. Mastodon’s decentralized structure makes such a purchase impossible.
Secondly, Post’s model of allowing users to monetize their tweets/toots, may make financial sense for those prolific writers who have a large cadre of followers, or who have corporate financing. The typical social media user, like me, has no need or desire for this functionality. And my suspicion is that Post will eventually charge, if it doesn’t already, for the ability to be listed as a “premium news provider”. What are Post’s arbitrary criteria for determining if a user can join this A-list of news providers? And how much will Post charge to become a Post A-lister? Will that charge be within the grasp of the typical small, up-and-coming writer or artist who just wants to promote their work, grow their audience, and make a little money doing so?
Thirdly, my growing distaste for social media algorithms determining what I see in my feed was big driver in my decision to choose Mastodon. It’s been very refreshing to be able to see toots that I probably would not have seen had I not started the habit of perusing Mastodon’s Federated feed. It has opened up the world of views and people for me.
As an example, about 2 weeks into my Mastodon experience, I came across this hilarious toot from @andthisismrspeacock, which humorously summed up how I started feeling about Mastodon.
Lastly, I totally agree with @BlaznK9, the key is finding the right instance. I started out mastodon.online, but felt inhibited by the 500 character limit for each toot, since my nature is to write longer, more descriptive things about my many interests - like this reply 😀 . So I switched to qoto.org, which has a character limit of 65K characters. Way more than enough for even a verbose person like me - and perhaps others who feel a need to blog.
@edcasabar @Teri_Kanefield @andthisismrspeacock @BlaznK9 .... Great post, Ed.
@edcasabar @Wineaux Glad you're enjoying it here!