When you refer to Musk's site, you should call it "Saudi-funded Twitter" just for the sake of consistency. Bonus: You'd be 4x more accurate than his claim that NPR, which gets about 1% of its money from taxpayers (well, their grandchildren), is "government funded".

(Corrected to fix Saudi ratio; Qatar also owns a chunk of Twitter, so Middle Eastern oil sellers hold about 5% of the shares together.)

Meanwhile, NPR continues to show its fundamental cowardice by remaining on Saudi-funded Twitter despite Musk's visible contempt for it, and for all journalism other than right-wing mockery of the press.
@dangillmor Maybe because Mastodon is such unusable steaming horse manure that NPR needs an actually usable platform.

@bmaz Surprised to hear you say that when, from my experience, that's not correct.

I have (had) 3x the followers there and 10x the engagement -- real, valuable engagement -- here.

@dangillmor I have no compunction whatsoever with what I said. The user interface here is discombobulated garbage. And a fair amount of that seems driven by holier than thou pious overlords that have decreed that it be so. No quote responses! No search function, use hashtags! Etc. These people are as big of pricks as Musk Maybe there will be a better alternative to Twitter in the future, but Mastodon sure is not it.

@bmaz There are or will be client software that does what you want -- and there's a fair amount of pressure building on the "overlords" to accommodate more functionality.

To compare these people to Musk is way, way, way over the top.

@dangillmor @bmaz I think the original decision not to have quote tweets was an arrogant one but it also sounds like one that may soon be reversed.

The rest is just the growing pains of a system suddenly handling a lot of growth, plus the time it takes to iterate new features. Not arrogance.

I also disagree that it's too underdeveloped to be used. The core functionality is there and probably more robust than Twitter now is. Plus with a lot more potential than a proprietary platform would have.

@cathygellis @dangillmor @bmaz

It feels like some of the issues (other than quote tweet) are the apps people use, rather than the service itself.

Tapbots’ Ivory feels more like a proper native client with all the things I’d expect and a handful of small, welcome surprises I didn’t.

@alttag @cathygellis @dangillmor So I am supposed to go expose myself to some detritus named "Tapbot" to be able to use a different website? Seriously? Do you have any idea how stupid this all really is?

@bmaz @alttag @cathygellis @dangillmor
bmaz, if you hate it here so much then it begs the question: Why are you here?

I could no longer stand Musk's ego and slow demolition of Twitter so I left. I don't post there anymore nor visit it, to the point where if a link is to Twitter I simply don't click on it.

@Air_Cooled_Nut @alttag @cathygellis @dangillmor What a superior human being you are! I do not give a damn what you do or click on.
@bmaz @alttag @cathygellis @dangillmor
🤣 🖕 to you too!
@Air_Cooled_Nut @alttag @cathygellis @dangillmor Take your dumbass emojis and run along now.
@bmaz @alttag @cathygellis @dangillmor
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣