Lotta talk about replacing Twitter.

The better dialogue is how to get people to re-evaluate how they engage with the internet.

Personally, I'm convinced of two things:

- You can't 1:1 replace Twitter unless it's a similar top-down walled garden.

- Most people probably shouldn't want a Twitter replacement, since Twitter is bad for us.

Instead of finding/molding/creating a replacement, we should encourage people (and ourselves!) to focus on what they like most about internet interaction.

I keep seeing people say Mastodon is nothing like Twitter. And they’re right.

Mastodon is an echo of the old internet, it’s decentralised, chaotic. What you get depends on your sysadmin. You can’t search, everything has to be shared to you by a human. Networks split apart and rejoin. What you see is your unique connection to it.

Is this good? Maybe. But for me that’s the internet I grew up with. No algorithms, no targeted adverts, just human interaction, and it was glorious.

Someone reminded me that I shouldn't find "people to follow" here. Instead, I should find people to *have conversations with.*

Unlearning 14 years of Twitter terminology and mindset isn't an overnight thing. But it's important to shift how I look at this space.

Because this space is special.