Welcome to the home of BBC Micro Bot!
This is now the main, the Twitter account will be downgraded to a mirror in the coming weeks.
The bot ran its first Mastodon toot yesterday, I expect it to be up full time at the weekend.
Thanks for joining us on this journey 👾
UK politics
This is really worrying. Arresting journalists just for doing their job is something we would expect in Putin's Russia or Xi's China.
We should really not be seeing this in a western democracy.
You should all #follow @astrojenny for your #AstronomyNews.
Subtoot
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a metric megashitload of opprobrium, snark and derision, apparently. #SubToot
It’s interesting that the biggest communication challenge facing Mastodon communities is explaining that it’s basically a protocol and a network of independent, interconnected servers, which is what the Web, e-mail, even DNS and most of the fundamental services we use on the internet are, and always were.
It just illustrates just how much ‘Big Tech’ proprietary social media platforms swallowed up and walled off, if it’s now difficult to explain what the internet actually is!
Meta: Mastadon vs OtherPlace
And thankfully there is no annoying “you should follow these random accounts and celebrities” and “give us your address book so we can annoy your friends and colleagues too” bull ever ten posts.
Meta: Mastadon vs OtherPlace
One thing I love about
#Mastodon is the fact that they explicitly give you the controls they denied you on the b**dsite.
For example: I can filter *everything* with a keyword. This semi-worked in the #OtherPlace, but not reliably, never for adverts, and not for the other crap they forced you to see.
Tip 1: Use hashtags. There's no algorithm to suggest followers or shove posts into your feed in the hopes you follow someone.
Tip 2: Boost (re-post) toots liberally. *You* are the algorithm.
Tip 3: Use CW (content warnings / content wrappers) to discuss politics, the meta.
Tip 4: To create "threads", make the first post public and each reply "unlisted" to prevent clogging up your instance's feed.
Tip 5: Provide text descriptions, even just basic ones, when attaching photos or media.
Tip 6: Use the "report" features for moderating trolls so your admins can take action.
Physics geek, dev nerd, science fan. Esperantisto. Secularism, blasphemy & sarcasm. Evidence or STFU. Plant hater. Caveat lector. Enthusiastic cat and dog dad. RT≠︎👍 Slowly moving widdershins into #InfoSec