Twitter could be pretty informative and entertaining, and I’d occasionally tweet posts myself. But the Elon Musk takeover seems to be Very Bad News on a number of fronts. So, like many, I’m backing off for the time being, though I’ve not actually deleted my account yet — the Musk era might or might not last. Hence I’ve removed the Twitter feed from the footer that shows on Logic Matters pages (when using a computer or tablet browser).
Instead, I’ll post occasional tweet-sized music-related snippets in the same place — about new CDs, old CDs I’ve been re-listening to, YouTube video links, etc.
Again like many, I’ve joined a Mastodon server, and there’s now a link in the footer to @PeterSmith@mathstodon.xyz. I’m seeing more mathsy stuff and fewer cats and otters. Still exploring who to follow in the wider fediverse. But so far, I’m enjoying the atmosphere and the occasional distractions.
I must agree with you, Rowsety. It is too early to complain anything about Twitter. This seems like mob behavior. Someone of some niche says something is bad, and the mob does its job of corroborating such nonsense opinions. A kind of disappointment given that I have in high regards the author of this blog. But that is the way the world moves today. Too bad.
Are you experiencing anything newly Bad on Twitter? Because I’m not: it seems the same as before, and I even read (and post) tweets on some contentious (UK) political issues and follow political journalists.
In any case, Mastodon won’t work as a Twitter replacement for me. One reason is enough on its own: Mastodon does not let you search for words or phrases (except in things you’d have seen anyway). And this is deliberate; it’s not seen as a deficiency that will some day be remedied.
Then there are other issues such as the extensive used of “content warnings” even for innocuous things.
(One of the curious aspects of Mastodon apologetics is the tendency to address complaints by saying Mastodon is “like e-mail”, as if that’s what people would be happy for all social media to be like. Need to choose a server / instance? That’s like choosing your e-mail service (gmail, hotmail, …). Too many content warnings, tedious to click through? That’s like e-mail subject lines. And so on.)
As a substitute for Twitter, Mastodon might, I suppose, suit people who want to be in a network of gated communities and, on Twitter, were mostly just reading what appeared in their own timeline rather than reading more widely.