@That Old Guy with the Beard @libertyoftheforest @Melissa BearTrix Actually, you must never do either.

You must never put any exclusive information such as explanations only into the alt-text.

That's because there are people who cannot access alt-text, be it due to physical disabilities (you can't access alt-text if you don't have at least one working hand, at least not easily), be it due to their choice of software.

If there's any information not in the image, not in the post text, only in the alt-text, then these people will not be able to get this information. It's lost to them.

So do not use alt-text to expand your 500-character limit!

If you need more than 500 characters once, write a thread.

If you need more than 500 characters regularly, move to where you have more characters, e.g.:

• a Mastodon server with a higher character count
• a Mastodon fork with a higher character count
• Misskey (3,000 characters)
• Sharkey (at least 3,000 characters, often even more)
• Akkoma (at least 5,000 characters)
• Friendica (16,777,215 characters)

It's all part of the Fediverse, i.e. it's all fully federated with Mastodon. (Greetings from Hubzilla which has over 16M characters, too).

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Misskey #Sharkey #Akkoma #Friendica #Hubzilla #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta