Slated
Taylor LorenzBeen a heavy user of all the Twitter alternatives for a minute now and I gotta say Mastodon is my favorite. There are definitely some features I’d like to see here (like quote posts and a DM inbox), but the community on Mastodon seems to have the best vibe and there are so many smart techies that it’s been the most helpful for finding sources.
Matt Blaze@taylorlorenz Well, now you're in for it.
Eugen Rochko@taylorlorenz Thank you for saying that!
Jeremiah@taylorlorenz I'm with you on this. I want to take a look at BlueSky again in a year or so after checking it out a couple months ago. I'm sure the slow rollout has its benefits, but it has also, in my opinion, limited content too much.
Raineer 
🦆@taylorlorenz we’re very glad to have you. It’s so critical to have journalists on the platform, especially in tech.
El Brown@taylorlorenz Literally just joined Bluesky an hour ago. Seems way more of the semi-famous I followed on the bird site are there. It’s been a slog here on Mastodon (but the Ivory app is magic).
Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping@taylorlorenz You probably know that you get quote posts with clients like Mona or Ice Cubes
soragrey 🕯️@stooovie @taylorlorenz tx for mentioning, I did not know! Mona looks p cool
AI6YR Ben@taylorlorenz Thank you for being here, and working through the community growing pains!
tusooa 
西风 
@taylorlorenz You are more than welcome to try out other activitypub implementations like Pleroma. They are interconnected with Mastodon and have more features.
Christoph Howard@taylorlorenz It's good to have you here!
GadgetGav@taylorlorenz Ironically I’ve seen a couple of people I followed here make dramatic statements about how it’s so toxic here that they’re off to bluesky in the last couple of weeks.
My experience has been more like yours than theirs I feel.
My experience has been more like yours than theirs I feel.
Stefan@taylorlorenz personally I focus less of vibes because they shift over time and I can even effect the vibes. After twitter I'm thinking a lot about where I can build a community that doesn't depend on venture capital or profits to justify it's existence.
Jon Lindemann@taylorlorenz I think people here are also helpful and genuinely care. The fact that that you're even here (generally) means that you value genuine interactions.
chris overcash@taylorlorenz it’s like 2008 Twitter here
Lee 🌏@taylorlorenz
Did you see this excellent video about Mastodon and Fediverse? I don't feel like the broader public get what's going on here.
Mastodon Is Bigger Than A Twitter Replacement
Keagan@MrLee that was a great video! Going to add two other videos that are great explainer videos.
https://tilvids.com/w/wx2iLhD3pTipbKFJKLyx5t
https://tilvids.com/w/hRzMpJwSkqEK3ZTNPbSuqu
Mastodon in 180 Seconds 🐘
Cătă 🇷🇴🇺🇦🇲🇩🇪🇺@taylorlorenz don't be shy on testing waters on other #ActivityPub based platforms as well. You get the same audience and the same people, while enjoying these platforms' particular features. Friendica, for example, has a #DM inbox already, as well as #QuotePosts.
You can also add titles to your posts, as well as format your text using #markdown or #BBCode, and many other features that haven't made their way into Mastodon just yet (or were already for years when Mastodon added them). Not to mention you can write texts as long as your heart desires, as there's no limit on them (and they appear just as long on Mastodon).
A good and fairly popular Friendica server is venera.social
Edit: and yes, I am on Friendica. Writing to you from Friendica as well. The server I'm on, libranet.de, uses a less stable version of it. venera.social has the same admin but uses the current stable release.
Anders Puck Nielsen@petrescatraian @taylorlorenz I tried Friendica, but I found it to be slow and rather buggy. Is your experience better?
@anderspuck it is sometimes a bit slow for me indeed (at least on my server, which uses the rc version). But what did you mean by buggy? 😁:
What bugs did you encounter?
don Elías (como los buses) 🥨@taylorlorenz it is nice to read your content here
CoffeeGeek@taylorlorenz I have to completely agree!
My own want list for Mastodon:
- Direct Messages (the private thing seems a stop gap)
- Quoting posts
- URL Cards that work 100% of the time
- More than 4 images attached to a post (perhaps some kind of tie in with pixelfed?)
mathew@taylorlorenz @coffeegeek Yes, be aware that Mastodon does not have DMs.
Matt Blaze (@[email protected])
Periodic reminder that the "Direct Message" / "Private Mention" function here is dangerously broken with confusing semantics. - Anyone mentioned *anywhere* in the body of a PM gets a copy. - "Disabling" PMs in your profile merely means YOU never see messages sent to you; senders can still send them, with no error indication. - Nothing is encrypted, which means administrators on any instance that processes a message can see them. I strongly recommend using something else for private messages.
Anne@taylorlorenz That's been my experience here as well :)
Xibee@taylorlorenz I wish one of those #tech types would explain why I have all FOLLOW buttons greyed out and no one will respond to me to help, though.
I used to get rapid response on posts or problems there and here it’s like …..crickets
Jordan (Damn Good Tech)@xibee @taylorlorenz What's there vs. here? X vs. Mastodon? And what did you need rapid responses for?
Irfan@xibee @taylorlorenz Which app are you using? Or web ui?
@irfan @taylorlorenz It was just “Mastodon” app and I’ve just given up and loaded Ice Cubes. This works!
Pandoria Falls@taylorlorenz this has also been my experience so far
@taylorlorenz
A good culture is what happens when you don't have some greedy capitalist running the show. Who is only interested in getting more clicks.
When ordinary people set up social media, then it's all about human interaction. What do most people want? Polite conversation. Not aggressive behaviour. I'm not sure how Mastodon will pan out, but it's 100% clear to me that community organised and moderated social media is far better than Corporate Social Media.
A good culture is what happens when you don't have some greedy capitalist running the show. Who is only interested in getting more clicks.
When ordinary people set up social media, then it's all about human interaction. What do most people want? Polite conversation. Not aggressive behaviour. I'm not sure how Mastodon will pan out, but it's 100% clear to me that community organised and moderated social media is far better than Corporate Social Media.
Gabriele Pollara@taylorlorenz curious what you think it what it would take to persuade some more of your journalist colleagues to post and interact here more often. Thank you
MarkGAgreed. Mastodon is great. I do feel quote posts would be a mistake though. Rather than direct conversation between people, quote posts often seem to encourage speaking of people (usually derisively) in the third person (IE, and he/she said this!) I'd rather not encourage such behaviour here.
@taylorlorenz I heard quote replies are coming. Happy to be a tech resource for you, too. 👍
Creative! Queer!! Autistic!!!
anemone@taylorlorenz I prefer Misskey but the network overall is nice
Mark R. Stoneman@taylorlorenz Best vibe for me too.
Maria BustillosSAME and it'll be even better as (opt-in) search capabilities develop!!
Susan Romano For Harris@taylorlorenz definitely reminds me what I liked about Twitter in olden days
💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱@taylorlorenz
Quote posts are planned - in the meantime there's this tool for making a prettied-up screenshot of the original post (just put in the link and select how you want it to look) https://mastopoet.raikas.dev/
Quote posts are planned - in the meantime there's this tool for making a prettied-up screenshot of the original post (just put in the link and select how you want it to look) https://mastopoet.raikas.dev/
Raymond W Gallacher
Mike Fraser@taylorlorenz I'm with you on quote posts. It's the only thing I miss. Some client software simulates it.
Francis 🏴☠️ Gulotta
Yuki 🏳️🌈🇨🇦💕💕💕@taylorlorenz
May I suggest you look at migrating to a instance on Misskey, you can quote posts, and most instances have larger character caps and custom emojis
May I suggest you look at migrating to a instance on Misskey, you can quote posts, and most instances have larger character caps and custom emojis
Chozo@taylorlorenz I'm not sure if you've tried any of the Mastodon-adjacent platforms like Misskey or Firefish, but some of them support quote-reposting.
🇨🇦 Steve@taylorlorenz What are you looking for in DMs that private mentions don’t do? I know they don’t encrypt, but I don’t think many of the others do either.
Texty the Bard@taylorlorenz It feels pretty dead here to me, plus there are a lot of obnoxious alt-left sorts who drive me up the wall (don't get me started on the ableist bullshit coming from the bike evangelists, for instance.) But once I blocked kolektiva and a few others, that's down to a dull roar.
I sort of miss the constant flow of instant current events, and I'm occasionally tempted to check out one of the others for that reason, but I do feel better emotionally without that noise, so here I am.
Tea time.@taylorlorenz I'm a fan of https://elk.zone , as #elk gives me a clean, functional, dead easy to use interface for #mastodon , without ads or pushed content, along with a nighttime mode that's easy on the eyes, while also reducing energy consumption on laptops and portable devices.
When people say Mastodon's UI is a mess, I have to explain that ONLY Mastodon intentionally & inherently allows you to change the UI as you please. The Big Boys want to force their toxic experience on you.
When people say Mastodon's UI is a mess, I have to explain that ONLY Mastodon intentionally & inherently allows you to change the UI as you please. The Big Boys want to force their toxic experience on you.
The Saanich Daily@KraftTea @taylorlorenz I've been using Elk exclusively for a couple months now.
shredhq@KraftTea @taylorlorenz Very happy using Elk as well. Once in a while I have to reenter my login info. I use the app or go through a browser. I like the simple clean interface and I can view with larger fonts and 95% of onscreen info is the timeline.
SteveBologna@taylorlorenz I like Mastadon but for some reason I can’t post news articles on it. I can post pics but there you are. I like Tribel too
Brian Clark@taylorlorenz glad to hear it!
@taylorlorenz I remember trying twitter for about a week. I just couldn’t get into it. Not sure exactly why but Mastodon has made me stick around and engage. It really is great here!
Spacewizard! (Ed H)@taylorlorenz WE LOVE YOU TOO TAYLOR
Dannyboyguyman@taylorlorenz A legitimate, potentially intractable problem with activity pub/federated platforms is replies to modestly high distribution posts are not visible to all users, depending on the ties between any two instances. This can cause the OP to experience a kind of abusive brigading effect when repliers can't detect multiple identical responses already posted.
Also difficult generally to detect and moderate coordinated inauthentic behavior in the fediverse.
@taylorlorenz I would be unsurprised to learn there are the same or similar responses to this very post.
I would pay to subscribe to something like a client side steering agent/blocklist operated by a distributed professional trust and safety guild. Or better, a service that instances could subscribe to in bulk.
Sam Kash
JL Johnson 
@taylorlorenz Nice to have you warm up to the fedi. I distinctly recall that when you joined you were off putting and abrasive with your demands that Mastodon be just like Twitter. I unfollowed after the nonstop quote tweet silliness.
Jennifer Moore 😷What's your purpose in posting this opinion?
@unchartedworlds there is no opinion here. Just fact. She came, caused quite a stir, threw a fit, argued with folks and was off to the other platforms. So as I noted, it’s nice to see she’s warmed up to the fedi.
You don't think "off putting and abrasive" contains an element of opinion?