Another migration in our midst

AI Image: An art deco image that depicts computer users moving from Twitter to another social network

With the US elections now settled, and a second Trump term being a reality, I guess many (most?) of the remaining hold outs on Twitter are finally migrating.  I decided to keep my personal account, for now, and just promote pro-union, pro-education, pro-left, and anti-war messages, while posting my regular content on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon.  I am also in the process of shutting down my department's Twitter account for good.

This new wave of migration has brought a few people out of the woodwork, both on Mastodon and on the Mastodon subreddit, asking why people are moving to Bluesky (or even threads) and not to Mastodon. They also get on their high horse about it, but let's talk about that later.

I think that Mastodon had a major advantage in 2022 when Musk bought Twitter.  They were really the only game in town. There was no Threads, there was no Bluesky.  There were some weird Crypto-based microblogs, like Nostr; or blasts from the past like Plurk. I'm still on Plurk, FWIW 😂.  So...yeah, major advantage squandered! It didn't have to be this way, but I think that Mastodon is suffering from some user experience issues which aren't great for wide adoption, and some philosophical (or perhaps dogmatic) issues that turn people off.

I am still on Mastodon, but it's my secondary network. Many from Twitter rushed onto it in 2023, and few stayed after Bluesky opened its doors (without the need for a freakin' invite). Looking back at some of the major hurdles I saw in using the service:

First, you have to find the "right" server. In all honestly, I should have gone with mastodon.social from the start and not even bothered trying to find an affinity group. The first server I joined I picked because other fellow academics were on it and I thought that would be a good place to coalesce, find my old connections again, and continue on as usual. The server I joined (academia related) had a dipshit admin who busted my chops about not including content warnings (CWs) about every single frickin' thing. He was also a pain whenever I didn't include alt-text for my images all the time. And, his biggest bugaboo was about cross-posting to other networks which was verboten on his server. I needed to use the Mastodon interface to post to that network and not use things like fedica or hootsuite. Seriously... fuck right off... 🙄.  I got placed on probation and I left. I went to a DS106 server run by a group of hobbyists I know. If I weren't a giant geek, I would have sworn off Mastodon already. In fact, I had an account on mastodon back in 2017 trying things out, but I left because it had a weird vibe.  While Musk and Dorsey are major wankers, this particular server admin was competing for the Musk Award...🙄

Second, Mastodon has no quote toots. Yeah, yeah..."it leads to abuse" and other 🐴💩. I don't buy it. It's a design decision and everyone's making excuses for Eugen's design decision. When people want to react to something they don't necessarily want to engage with you, and that's fine. I can easily copy the URL for your post and post it in my new post as a quote.  No quote toots is more of a speedbump than anything else. The whole idea that the software wants you to talk to people instead of reacting to what they say...well, why not both? No quote toots leads to a different sort of shithead response. Antisocial behavior exists in that network too. For example, I got a reply to a post of mine from someone who was very much into the ethos of Mastodon, but the poster had a #dontatme. He responded to my post (as the platform forces you to). I find this more antisocial than if they just quote-tooted me and commented. At least then their intentions would be clearer. When Mastodon geeks are confronted with this, their reaction is either (1) why not use a client that supports retooting? or (2) why not use another Fediverse service that does that (soooo... NOT use Mastodon). Good job recommendations, folks. And then you wonder why people didn't join Mastodon. 🙄

Third, finding people you know is a pain. To be honest, it's gotten better, but it's still a pain. Also, because people have moved servers (like I did), they may have several profiles that pop up in a search one that redirects to another and then to another. Old profiles should really be invisible to the end user and only the final/current profile should be active. Related to finding people you know, getting user recommendations is a pain. One of the nice things about algoTwitter was that if I followed someone with similar interests I'd get recommendations for people like that. That's how I expanded my academic network on Twitter.

Fourth, nothing frickin' threads...For example, I used to follow Cory Doctorow and his 30-post thread would litter my bleeping timeline. Why can't Mastodon collect all that and automatically collapse it unless I expand the view? This is a serious usability issue. Furthermore, when news organizations (or RSS feeds) cycle through and post ALL THEIR CONTENT at the same time, it takes over my feed...which is annoying.

Fifth, there are wankers on Mastodon too. People like to think that the network is all toasted marshmallows and coombaya circles, and we can defederate those Nazi idiots, but let's not discount other toxic individuals (geeks, fandoms, political learnings) that remain and make it unpleasant. Despite the inclusivity "promise" of the Fediverse, people break out in hives about federating Threads, BlueSky, Instagram, and so on. If that's where part of my network is, and Mastodon is choosing to keep them out while technically being able to connect, then - as a user - I have a decision to make about where I want to be. Defederating large social networks who can connect with you is a choice. Many in the Fediverse are virtue signaling in weird ways, and ways that disconnect rather than connect.  I don't know what the costs of running a server are, and what the impact is on choosing to keep something federated.  I understand the economic argument.  I don't understand the ideological one (from people who are supposedly open).

Having spent a lot of time on these three social networks over the past year, as I've been moving away from Twitter, the vibes are different on each network. Bluesky is pretty Twitter-like, which may be a draw for folks (similar mental schemas for use).  Threads seems like an Instagramy kind of Twitter.  It's fine, but there also seems to be heavy-handed moderation. It doesn't impact my use of it, but some of the mod decisions seem questionable, especially around news source access.  Mastondon...I heard it described as the place where nerds go to discuss the relative merits of Linux distros 🤣🤣. Now, it certainly has that vibe, but it doesn't bother me. But I can see how it might be a hindrance to broader adoption.

Sarah H. did make an interesting point about Mastodon: Does it have to scale? Do you have to be in a space where a lot of other people are?  Is there value in a small community that isn't too loud/busy? The answer I have to that is "no."  Mastodon can stay small.  I rather enjoy being part of a DS106 community, and being somewhat connected to a few other folks on Mastodon. It's sort of like being part of a specific discussion forum community running on phpBB rather than being on Reddit. I just don't think that if your mindset is small/artisanal you can complain that people are going to Bluesky and Threads and not to Mastodon. The user experience decisions and the dogmatic approach of some members of the community are repulsors rather than attractors.  At the end of the day, the lack of your specific community and the technological/usability decisions impact retention and recruitment. 

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