Mastodawn

Andre Jul 16, 2023

I want to escape Twitter, but that has turned out to be harder than I thought. Mainly because of 213K followers. It took more than 8 years to achieve that.

But Mastodon has potential. I'm hoping it will be my new home.

My profile is now updated with more personal details. I don't want to do #factchecking or #debunking just via my website. Feel free to ask/tag me especially in case you see an iffy picture or video.

Note that my website doesn't have ads or tracking. https://hoaxeye.com/

HoaxEye

A fake image is worth zero words

HoaxEye

ⅅasⓦarⓚeinℍuhn Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye just post once a day where you are to find from now on - whoever thinks he or she misses your content will follow.

Flore Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye So glad to see you here ! I really missed your account (and PicPedant) when I moved here).

And I already noticed that some farm content accounts that you debunk on twitter have set foot on the fediverse...

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@flore unfortunately PicPedant has been inactive for quite some time. I can’t find him on Mastodon either. He inspired me to start this hobby over 8 years ago

Flore Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye I really liked this account :/

Joé McKen Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye Losing interest in Bluesky? I follow you in all three places, so I’m just curious.

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@joemcken Bluesky seems to be very quiet. I'm there mainly to see where it's going

Joé McKen Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye It’s definitely a lot smaller at the moment, what with being an invite-only beta and all. I have hopes for it.

Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye I used to follow your work on #Twitter and now I plan to follow your work here on #Mastodon.

#Factchecking #Debunking #Fediverse

Jim Campbell Jul 16, 2023

Love your work, Janne. Good job.

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@JustJimWillDo Thanks, much appreciated!

JJ Peterson Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye Elon counts on people being addicted to their followers on Twitter. It’s why the fascism keeps getting worse. Journalists also believe their followers are more important than democracy.

@infosec_jcp 🐈🃏 done differently Jul 16, 2023

@JJPeterson @hoaxeye

You can follow major news on the #fediverse without Elon's dead birb cite at https://press.coop/directory

Not all journalism relies on T(w)itter btw. Not all journalists*.

* The irony of the 'copy that's major news is a placeholder btw 😉

press.coop

A mirror of Twitter press accounts.

Mastodon hosted on press.coop

JJ Peterson Jul 16, 2023

@infosec_jcp @hoaxeye My point isn’t how many are off Twitter, it’s that so many journalists do count on twitter and will remain there because social media influencing is what they prefer to doing journalism. All are looking for a site that will allow them to instantly recreate their following - so they’ll go to whatever site they think gives them that, and then are beholden to different immature, antisocial tech bro and his toxic personality.

@infosec_jcp 🐈🃏 done differently Jul 16, 2023

@JJPeterson @hoaxeye

As a journalist I have grown my audience here on Mastodon twice as large as I ever did on the bird cite in 1/2 the time I put into Twitter. Twitter is a cesspool now. All the things the right complained about they have reshaped into their own version of what they were complaining about. This is not a sustainable situation over there btw.

Most of the numbers to views vs. the 🔎 'trending' numbers don't even HAVE numbers associated with the topics chosen. The steady decline of what use to be a useful public OPENWEB website that HAD a public utility BECAUSE it was OPEN has now been RATELIMITED to ONE TWEET. NO REPLIES. It USE to be an open web site that was listed and searchable via web crawlers now has declined so much that the desperation to monetize the latest MLM scheme is getting to desperation levels of cringe.

This is a fascinating #MBA101 and #PR101 level of study though to continue to document. 🔎👀👀🔍🧐🔮

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@infosec_jcp @JJPeterson Thanks! Good comment

coldclimate Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye I'd not see you on twitter but two friends have mentioned you in a brief scroll here so followed. 👋

🌊Ann Morris🐕🍀🌎🌊🌊Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye I notice you have 3.6 followers but only follow 30 or so. Is there a reason why you don’t feel the need to follow your followers?

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@AnnMorris I haven’t decided my Mastodon follow ‘strategy’. On Twitter I follow fact checkers, many journalists, OSINT experts, scientists from various fields. Others I follow via lists. I have about 30 lists. Idea is to keep my timeline manageable so that posts about fact checking and related are easy to find. I don’t know enough about Mastodon yet to make decisions about this.

Virginia Murr Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye @AnnMorris

FWIW: I tracked fakes on Twitter for years. I was inordinately cautious w/ whom I followed & my followers (constantly culled).

Mastodon has been vastly different (& better) in that regard. I am not remotely concerned with follower counts, but I can tell you a couple of things that will help:
1. following a lot of accounts of interest is *good* here
2. Actual engagement is necessary (so, post, boost others, and *reply* to others)--this will help to boost your following

@hoaxeye all the best for you!! i believe the fediverse is the future. as painful it is with twitter (or threads) - we should organically grow the fediverse together. 🥳

theothertom Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye Think I followed you here after you tweeted a link to your profile or similar, but might be worth verification to your profile (via a website snippet) to help with trust if you get boosted etc.

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@tom I tried to verify my blog, but it didn’t work. My site is hosted by Wordpress so I don’t have full control of the content. I added the verification HTML to one page, but apparently Mastodon didn’t see that. I’ll try to figure out why

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@tom Now my website is verified 👍 I had to add a custom widget footer that allows HTML code

Stefan Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye I found you here. Quality for quantity!

𝒜dam 𝒮cheinberg // sethadam1 Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye No matter how many followers you have on Twitter, just make sure you consider the quality of engagement here. I really think Fediverse apps, in general, right now, have a great signal to noise ratio.

Bioalchemy13 🇺🇸🇺🇦Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye A lot of the big Twitter luminaries have mirror accounts on Mastodon set up by their followers. It’s a one way feed and is supported by Patreon. That way I can see what Kamala Harris (or whoever) says on Twitter without me having to go there. Example: @vp

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@Bioalchemy13 @vp Thanks, good to know!

Anna Nic Jul 16, 2023

I can understand it's not easy if you really want to spread a message/infos to as many people as possible. However twitter has become worse than I ever thought it could be - the amount of Nazis and propaganda bots there is incredible, the owner itself promotes the worst political agendas and actively supports authoritarian regimes, pushes accounts with such propaganda while he blocks and shadowbans many decent and serious accounts. I wish more pros would find the courage to leave it.

HoaxEye Jul 16, 2023

@annanic I’m painfully aware of Twitter’s problems. That’s why I’m trying to find a new home. I’ve reduced my presence there a lot. But I won’t probably delete my account for the time being. All my contacts to media, certain scientists and other fact checkers are there. Most of them are not on Mastodon.

AmiW Streetart ❄️Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye Welcome 💕

ꙮ 𝄃𝄁𝄂𝄀𝄀𝄁𝄃🇫🇯🇱🇨🇱🇧Jul 16, 2023

>213K followers

seuraa minua, ja anna kuolleet haudata kuolleitansa

Chris Real Jul 16, 2023

The values of the fediverse are not the values of Twitter.

Your high 'twitter score' has no meaning here—half of them were bots anyway.

ideaPDish Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye
Have a look at the sunken cost falacy

Dr Craig Dalȝell Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye If it's any help, I didn't know you over at the other place so count me as an absolute addition rather than a transfer.

Beanie MacIntosh Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye I’m betwixt and between - happy to give you a Mastodon follow. As a Scot 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and interested in Scotland becoming an independent country, I am interested in the sane way in which Finland appears to run itself.

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@BeanieMacIntosh thanks! About Finland right now https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/finnish-far-right-finance-minister-riikka-purra-accused-of-racist-online-comments 🙈

Finnish far-right finance minister accused of racist online comments

Riikka Purra says she will not resign after being linked to racial slurs and threats of violence made in 2008

The Guardian

Beanie MacIntosh Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye oh no what’s happened there?

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@BeanieMacIntosh Finland got a right-wing government with far-right elements in April's general election. Unfortunately the right wing populism won this time. Luckily we have general elections every four years so this won't last for ever.

TC Won't Give In To Lies Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye
Twitter is a dangerous site. You're not helping your followers by giving them a reason to stay as Musk makes it worse and worse.

Move your audience to a safer site, and realise you can't save them all
#TwitterMigration

Diabetic Heihachi Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye
I'm giving twitter maybe 18 more months before bankruptcy, sale of assets, shutdown of site and intellectual properties dispersed among big tech, and somehow melon man will come out ahead or even.

kechpaja Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye You’ll have a similar level of engagement here with significantly fewer followers! It may take some time to get back there, but you don’t need to get back to 213k to get similar numbers of people seeing your stuff.

Jill Minor Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye terrific! Welcome! I never saw you on Twitter but am delighted to encounter your work here.

Shawn King Jul 16, 2023

@hoaxeye Long time fan, first time texter. :)

Glad you’re here.

AskPippa🇨🇦Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye I think you’ll find fewer fake accounts following you here. And more legit non troll interactions.

Adam Williams Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye I feel like masto and threads will be it once threads app is less garbo and it joins fediverse. then the privacy minded on here can have their cake by avoiding threads app itself, but gain access to the brands/etc they can follow from threads one day.

@hoaxeye That's some fascinating stuff. I've even seen a couple of those images floating around.

The Reality Unicorn Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye I am sure you did not want your post to sound like it was written by a petulant child.

Why not treat this as an opportunity to get in early and grow your audience here. The Twitter fanbois are blind to the fact that Twitter could well be doomed, and very soon. Elon Musk admitted at the weekend they have lost 50% of their revenue. That's huge. He also has $13bn of debt to pay by end of July. Those numbers are not sustainable.

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@unicorn Correct, I did not want my post to sound like it was written by a petulant child. Maybe it’s because English is not my native language

The Reality Unicorn Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye You're English is very good. I hope you are able to build up following here as your website is interesting

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@unicorn Thank you. I’ll definitely try to “restart” here. Mastodon is the only promising platform currently. It’s bit difficult to use, UX isn’t optimal and the search function is limited, but it probably improves gradually and hopefully attracts a lot of new, active users

Bumble Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye @unicorn have a look at Calckey if you want something a little more powerful than Mastodon. Don't worry, they participate in the same Fediverse so they talk to each other seamlessly. There are many platforms out there all chatting away. It's not a closed system.

Calckey has longer posting length and text formatting, but many other great features.

Searching is different on the fediverse. As it is a distributed system there is no way to search the entire system. You search the server you are on only (but you find posts it knows about from other servers and people).

Hashtags are the most important way of finding things.

Also https://www.tootfinder.ch is a nice way to find posts across the fediverse, but only if someone has signed up to it.

Feel free to sign up and test Calckey on our server https://iBe.social You can delete the account if you don't like it.

Tootfinder

Walker Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye
allow me to offer a neighborly hand ✌️
... it's not how many followers one has,
but rather, it's WHO follows that matters
#NeurodivergentStudio 🌈🎙️

Jeroen Baert Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye welcome!

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@jbaert thanks 🙏

arclight Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye I took a big hit on followers and traffic and - more importantly - lost touch with a ton of people I wanted to stay in contact with. I'm sad and angry that everything played out as it did, but I have zero regrets about dropping Musk's Nazi Bar like a flaming turd. I never relied on Twitter for anything career or money-related so it was easier for me to walk away. I can't begrudge artists and authors who hitched their economic wagon to Twitter and can't afford to leave; I could so I did. Mastadon has not been a big change because I started using Twitter in 2009 or so, long before the cursed algorithmic feeds - manually building a feed by following a few interesting people and recursing through the interesting people they RT just seems natural. Lack of search, history, QTs, and actual non-public DMs are all irritating but not enough to push me to Bluesky or Yet Another Investor Owned Cesspit-to-Be. Account portability makes up for all of that and more, at least for now.

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@arclight my Twitter use is mostly about this non-profit hobby, so I don’t have any monetary ties either. But the contacts will be difficult: it took many years to establish good contacts with media, fact checkers, several scientists etc. Most of them are not here. Maybe I should try to lure them in 😎

the_last_voice Jul 17, 2023

@hoaxeye I will follow.

Nordnick 🌐Jul 17, 2023

@[email protected]

Welcome to the #Fediverse!

HoaxEye Jul 17, 2023

@nick Thanks! 👍