Liz Probert
Zoe WilliamsI've come on mastodon to share a piece about mastodon, which sounds like the kind of cannibalistic self-referentialism that started mad cow disease https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/16/could-this-be-twitter-without-the-toxic-slurry-my-week-on-mastodon
Jeroen Baert@zoesqwilliams loved this piece, have a +follow :) welcome to Mastodon!
Piff 123
JA Cobb@zoesqwilliams aka My Week at Twitter by Musk
J Simon van der Walt@zoesqwilliams welcome to the other place. Coincidentally, I'm going to be mentioning one of your Guardian articles in a lecture I'm giving today :
Sean | Drowned in Sound@zoesqwilliams the post beneath yours in my feed 😬 https://mas.to/@LauraKT/109352997926252975
Laura K Translator (@[email protected])
Can't see myself spending too much time on Mastodon. I just don't see how it's workable. Instances are blocking each other on a whim & innocent users are losing huge chunks of their followings. This is not conducive to building a community. The approach makes no sense. We all have the tools to block problematic servers or individuals. I don't need an admin making that decision for me. As it stands, Mastodon is unworkable as a large scale platform & certainly not a viable replacement for Twitter.
LumpySpaceEllie 🏴@zoesqwilliams my fave feature is the speech mark with an ! in it. If you click that when you make a post it creates a content warning so people can choose if they want to engage with politics, mh/chronic illness stuff, Twitter news etc. Good for days when you hate everything 💁🏻♀️
Chris M"You know that old joke about Edinburgh and Glasgow, where Edinburghers have hundreds of disparaging names for Glaswegians, and someone says to a Glaswegian: “What do you call them?” And the Glaswegian says: “We never talk about them”? Twitter and Mastodon are like that, except they’re both Edinburgh."
Pure dead brilliant.
Jesse@zoesqwilliams I mean, I did that with #Facebook back in the day. Popped on with an article to show just how bad the platform was, and still is, for everyone.
Bigbreakfast@zoesqwilliams Welcome aboard Zoe, glad to see you here
Alaric@zoesqwilliams lots of nice stories like this I’ve read lately. It’s like we all just bought our first modem and are trying out this darn fangled ‘internet’ that’ll never take off..
Ross Creek@zoesqwilliams I loved the article and it helped me figure out the way the app works. Not a Twitter addict but used to it. BUT most of my arts communities aren't here yet, so we have to give them a push.
JacitaH@zoesqwilliams thanks to this piece I’ve avoided the rookie errors and am set up. Feels weird though - like being the new girl at school.
mym@zoesqwilliams I enjoyed "There’s something missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Oh yes: where are all the arseholes?"
Have a dog from the Southside as a thanks.
TheRealBadBeardDude@zoesqwilliams Just read this. It's a good read. A lot of servers just updated yesterday so you can now follow specific # tags for things that interest you. Just search for a hashtags you like, lets say #vaping and you should see a small button, not dissimilar to the one for following another user, and now you'll see posts (toots) in your timeline from anyone # tagging vaping. It's a good way to keep track of your interests and meet like-minded people.
@zoesqwilliams Also on the webview, though this may appear different on your specific server I don't know, but you can search for a # tag and then Pin/Unpin it as you can see from my example below. Maybe it will help you navigate this place.
@zoesqwilliams And finally, in regards to your account password not working. If you did as I did at the beginning, you may have attempted logging into a different instance(server)? You create an account on one server and can move to another but just going to another with your current server account won't get you in there, unless you move your account there or create a new account for that server. Clear as mud :)
💨Dave 🇩🇪❤️🇺🇦@BadBeardDude
Either the server I joined hasn't been updated or it's the android app (official Mastodon), but I see no such button in the search bar.
Either the server I joined hasn't been updated or it's the android app (official Mastodon), but I see no such button in the search bar.
@Bk13051 I don't see it in the official app either but on my server on the webview on the website, I can search for any # and follow and pin it just like a user. I can't speak for your server.
Gabriele Pollara@BadBeardDude @zoesqwilliams agree - good feature. Though they need to make that icon way more prominent! (i missed it first time round)
@gpollara @zoesqwilliams I agree. I feel like I only found out about it because I was logged in at the right time.
notFrangible@zoesqwilliams but now that I’ve followed your advice (and, indeed, you) how do I get back to wherever I was before? 🫤
Ivan_Ko@zoesqwilliams here because of you 😅 maybe you should update “followers part” in your article 🤭
Laurent@zoesqwilliams Great article. Glad you're here. Hope you stay.
Soy@zoesqwilliams here checking out this brave new world after reading your piece. Thanks for the heads-up
@zoesqwilliams you've impressively boosted your follower count off the back of the article today! Good narrative, funny but also reflective of real issues. Personally, so far so good on here.
Richard Drew@zoesqwilliams Strange how one thing leads to another - and here I am on Mastodon:-)
Nathan deGargoyle 🇮🇲🏴@zoesqwilliams You're follow ratio is definitely becoming more unbalanced! 😁
Stuwrtlttle@zoesqwilliams excellent piece!
Mihailik 🌼🌼🌼🏃🏿♀️🌼🌼🌼@zoesqwilliams I get a feeling of an empty house.
Not even a new school, because there literally are very very few people around.
Brian B.@zoesqwilliams Nice piece :) If you haven't gotten that far yet - strongly recommend searching for and using hashtags to discover people and conversations on topics you're interested in. 😀 With the latest update you can actually follow hashtags too.
Hope 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏴 SNP@zoesqwilliams it’s a good article Zoe, and I like that you call out the nonsense that hateful right wing nuts are here for debate, when we all know they are simply hateful right wing nuts. They are not welcome (albeit they do have their own Instance, safely isolated from the rest of humanity!). As a trans ally it is also refreshingly clear of the poison and hate that infects Muskworld…all we have to do is keep it this way and continue to be vigilant in its defence.
Bodhipaksa@zoesqwilliams What a wonderful piece, Zoe. I especially enjoyed the Edinburgh/Glasgow analogy, and how you ended it with "Twitter and Mastodon are like that, except they’re both Edinburgh."
I also loved, 'This is the voice we needed in the “free speech debate” – the one that doesn’t instantly get bogged down parsing the subtle distinctions between your right to hate people and their right not to be hated, the one that just calls bullshit.'
Thank you.
Mike Bolam@zoesqwilliams Day 7 for me too.. I’m wondering if these are my “Hallmark” Sunset Swans? If so, Glad you like them…
Bjørnar (he/him)@zoesqwilliams Yours is the first piece I've seen that included the writer's Mastodon handle. Looking forward to them supplanting Twitter handles next to the byline!
Lord Martin of Llangollen ✅@zoesqwilliams I enjoyed that read, have a follow. 🙂
Jacque S@zoesqwilliams Hello! I read your piece in The G. Welcome to the real world. (I've only been here about 10 days myself)
Stijn@zoesqwilliams Good piece too! Bit worried about where this place will be heading off to once it gains more daily users (no saint am I, I only just got here a week ago). Let's hope the inclusive base remains solid and shows the bigots that will inevitably make it here (if only to bully) where the exit is.
Lena@zoesqwilliams big fan of the Glasgow joke
マリオ (Mario Menti)@zoesqwilliams it's the reason the original mastodon went extinct 🙂
karen@zoesqwilliams it could be different for different instances but you can see the toots of people you follow (and their boosts etc) under your home thingy (thingy the proper technical term I am sure) its the pic of the little house 🏠
@zoesqwilliams Good article in the Guardian - encouraged to give Mastadon a go - Thank You!
kultur.work@zoesqwilliams The struggle is real 🫶
Have you come across 'debirdify' yet? Very helpful tool https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/ Cheers, Linda
Have you come across 'debirdify' yet? Very helpful tool https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/ Cheers, Linda
ZimboZardoz
abeorch@zoesqwilliams perhaps you should do a follow-up woth @cubicgarden on why public service broadcasters and government should perhaps publish their social media activity on open protocols like #activitypub ?
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden@abeorch Its a interesting one which balances putting media where its safe for the audience and where the audience are comfortable (can't think of a better word) seeing it.
As you can tell its not always a clear overlap.
Hopefully that will shift in time.
@zoesqwilliams
@cubicgarden @zoesqwilliams I don't quite understand what you mean by either of those places. If #BBC ran an instance and offered anyone syndication thats pretty much like them broadcasting a channel on terrestrial tv. Anyone could #follow, anyone could #atthem (In the same way anyone can tweet them and anyone can email the BBC)
Jamie d@zoesqwilliams or that horrible disease with the coolest sounding name - Kuru
Richie Holland@zoesqwilliams a great piece!!
Nick@NorthLondon@zoesqwilliams i just read it, now I'm following you, so that worked a treat :-)
@N12nick me you too!
@zoesqwilliams I'm very flattered.
Steve@zoesqwilliams Having just read your article I knew which account to follow. You really need a better password policy.
C Martin@zoesqwilliams wow following has shot up from the 84 mentioned in your article - power of the press ;-)
@zoesqwilliams just read your article….. yup sounds about right, but is still more enjoyable than the BlueBird…. LOL
Gemma Abbott@zoesqwilliams I loved this! But now I am worried I’m being a complete bellend by not following everyone back. I did to begin with, but then I realised I’d spent almost an entire weekend on here and I needed to pay more attention to my children. So I turned off notifications. But now I’m worried my ratio of following to follower is the mark of A Bad Person. Tell you what, my social anxiety isn’t any better on this app compared to Twitter 😭
George@gem_abbott @zoesqwilliams I can't speak from the perspective of someone with thousands of followers, but many people do curate their followers. Some only follow back when there's a more direct interaction (presumably enjoyable).
I imagine it as part of forming a community of people you want to see and chat with fairly often. Then again, "The difference between the ideal way and the almost-ideal way is," as Mark Twain suggested, "the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug."
I'm sure you've got this.
@lefou23 @gem_abbott I'm following you whether you like it or not 😉
Nick McGill@zoesqwilliams I read your piece so you got a follow 😀
Donncha Ó Caoimh@zoesqwilliams I don't think you should try to follow everyone who follows you, but do follow hashtags your interested in. Check your local timeline if Home is not updating. And unfollow too.
Nice piece on this place. Glad to have you here.
Steve Clarke@zoesqwilliams @gem_abbott following! Great article, had a similar experience myself but starting to find my feet (just the left one to go)