For those who have downloaded their #Twitter archive data, you might want to check out this Twitter Archive parser by @timhutton:

https://github.com/timhutton/twitter-archive-parser

This converts your Tweet archive to #markdown and HTML, and replaces t.co URLs (which will break once Twitter goes away) with their original versions.

Afterwards, it asks if you want to try downloading the original size images.

Just ran this myself without any major issues, really easy to use as well.

If you want to see Mastodon at its best, strongly recommend these options:

 Android - Use apps Tusky or Fedilab

  iPhone/iPad - Use apps Metatext or Toot!

💻 Computers - Log in through your server's website

Mastodon was designed for websites and third party apps. These are *still* the best ways to use Mastodon!

(Official app exists because new people were only looking for an official app in app stores, and giving up when they didn't find one. You don't need to use it!)

I recenty discovered https://calmcode.io by @koaning and the teaching style really clicked with me.

Would anyone be interested in something like that, but for .NET? If so, what would you like to learn?

I love all of you and I want nothing but the best for each of you, particularly those on infosec.exchange. I understand that Mastodon isn't Twitter, that DMs aren’t end-to-end encrypted, that we are spread across different instances and it can be hard to find your friends, and that an instance can go away at any time, and that translating posts doesn't work correctly, and there is no native giphy support, and that some instances are overwhelmed and super slow, and that you don't think the federated model can scale to a billion users, or that it doesn't support full text search of every post and account, or that we can't comply with the GDPR, or that we don't support quote tweet style functionality, or that we shouldn't collect IP addresses, and many other things.

The fediverse is a work in progress. I've been here for going on 6 years. In that time, it's come a long, long way. That said, Mastodon is not going to appeal to everyone. The decisions I make are not going to appeal to everyone. No one is forcing you to be here. No one is forcing you to disclose your personal secrets into a network of federated servers running by volunteers and hobbyists. NB: this is not Twitter. It has some similar functionality, but it is not Twitter. Parts of it are better, IMO, and parts are not. The security community is generally among the most skilled and competent IT people the world has to offer. Mastodon is open source. Do you see where I'm going?

I set this instance up a long time ago for reasons I don't even remember. I have poured my soul into this thing because I believe in the importance of this community. I have effectively peaked in my career as a CISO and I and my family live well. I am not running this instance for fame, money, a better job, or anything other than wanting to foster a community of people that can learn from each other and make the world a better place. That's it.

As I've said in several recent interviews, I felt particularly obligated to ensure the security community had a good landing spot in the fediverse as everyone was running for the doors in Twitter. We've grown from 180 active users to about 30000 in the span of 3 weeks. I do not expect everyone to stay. Some will set up their own instances. Some will move to one of the other excellent security focused instances. Some will give up and move to on to some other social media. And that is OK. While I am super excited to see the buzz here, I don't have subscriber targets, engagement targets, retention targets, or anything else. The only metric I hold myself to is whether I think this is serving a useful purpose to the community.

I appreciate all of you, regardless of where you land. Infosec.exchange has been here for a long time and will continue to be here for you.