Trinsec @Qoto @trinsec@qoto.org

I'm two weeks into this #Mastodon experience, and feeling increasingly comfortable with its charm, authenticity, and #community.

I love #NoAds and #NoAlgorithms, pervasive on other platforms, trying to part me from my money or telling me how I should think.

Newbies like me may find the attached article useful: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-started-use-mastodon/

#MastodonTips #socialmedia

There's no full text search. Use hashtags for what's important in your post!

This is Radar at the top of a 5-foot tall cat tree. He likes high places, even though he can’t see they are high. He still doesn’t want to fall! He climbs down the cat tree backwards because he can’t see where to jump.

Someday I will get a good pic or video, it is amazing and should be shared. Not having eyes doesn’t slow him down a bit!
#BlindCat
#blindcatsofmastodon
#catsofmastodon

The last couple of days I've been experimenting with the modes on my phone. The "do not disturb" while sleeping is fine but my choices for the "driving" mode might need some work. I thought the reading out of whatsapp messages might be useful, particularly on the way in and out of said place.

Turns out I have a new found additional understanding of what VI people with screen readers are going through. When you've had the nice lady in your phone read "upward pointing finger with palm facing outwards" ten times because one of your colleagues likes to emphasise his messages with a follow-up screen full of ☝️ you begin to feel a fraction of their pain.

I have the option of turning off the reader. Not everyone does. I'll be thinking about that.

#vi #accessibility #GoodManners

So many people are having a bad first experience with Mastodon because they're using the official app which is lacking features, doesn't allow image uploads randomly, has random slowness, and doesn't give you easy access to the two most active feeds where you can find people (Local and Federated).

Please switch to Metatext, Tusky, or Tooot for a better mobile experience (or even use a browser).

Out of the >15k users that joined this week, over 11k are on the official apps.

A rather lovely author's note.

Haha ex-Twitter employees have created their own Mastodon instance 😅

"This server is intended for current and previous twitter employees and their friends/family. We filter signups to try keep the server focused for community reasons." - https://macaw.social/about/more

Welcome to the Fediverse! :)

#Mastodon

Apologies to Percy B Shelley:

I met a traveller from a distant land
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in cyberspace. . . . Near them, in the cloud,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the tagline, these words appear:
My name is Elonmusk, King of Twitter;
Look on my Wealth, ye Mighty, and despair!
No-one beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and empty spaces stretch far away.”

If you've noticed your Home timeline here is pretty quiet it's because at the other place you were constantly hit with 'here's a tweet someone you follow has Liked', or 'here's another from someone you don't follow but someone you follow follows them!', or just general spam. So your timeline was constantly full of things you really didn't want to see and hardly any content you actually cared about.

In this place you only see posts from those you follow, so remember to boost the good stuff!

Mastodon is is the 5th or 6th social media platform I've engaged with in a serious fashion, but it's been awhile since I had to start a profile from scratch. In the process I have relearned the one constant truth of all social media -- until you have accumulated at least 300-400 connections, the flow of information is going to seem skewed and limited, and you are going to wonder whether it is worth your time and effort.

Thus, echoing what others have said, you need to do more than just set up a profile and lurk, thinking an algorithm will direct information your way. You need to peruse the "Following" and "Follower" lists of people whose contributions you find interesting, then connect. Start with your local server and its Group and Profile directories (much easier to do from the web instance). Look for people you have followed on other platforms, and then look through their connections. The distributed nature of the fediverse (the so-called siloes that seem to cause a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from people still clinging to twitter) can make it a bit more difficult to find and connect to people quickly, but patience will be rewarded. Take the time to dip into other people's timelines, and connect to those that maintain interesting and active feeds. You will quickly notice a perception of increased 'quality' in your newsfeed once you have a few hundred links.

The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement.

For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously).

"Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature.

There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content.

It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off.

Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users.

#twitter #mastodon #twittermigration

I know there are plenty still doing #Wordle daily, because I see the results in my feed!

If that's you, you might like #Thirdle thirdle.org as sonething similar but different.

You get 3 words arranged in a crossword grid, with the joining letters given. Yellow is in the wrong place but the right word, while pink is in the wrong word.

I find it a slightly more strategic challenge.

Having been here since 2016, I can tell you there is definitely no such thing as a consensus on usage of content warnings on the fediverse. It's a decentralized network that doesn't belong to any one party, so by definition there is no single culture on it. Different corners have different expectations and customs.