Trying Mastodon

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2022-11-08T19:10:01.470Z · LW · GW · 4 comments

One of the comments on yesterday's post about Mastodon was someone on LW inviting me to join their instance, and I now have an account: @jefftk@schelling.pt [EDIT: moved to @jefftk@mastodon.mit.edu after schelling.pt disappeared]. Right now everything is pretty empty: I don't have a good way to find people I know who are using it and there's no aggressive People You May Know like on FB. So: if you're on Mastodon let me know your username and I'll add you.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on what it's like to use it later when I've actually done things, but so far:

• Following someone whose account I did know (Harris, @harris@social.coop) was a little clunky. I was able to get it to work by searching for their username on my server (instead of clicking "follow" on their profile). It also wasn't immediate, so I initially thought it didn't work.

• The local timeline seems uninteresting. Possibly this is being on the wrong server, or possibly this just isn't a feature I'd like.

• The global timeline is even less interesting, which isn't surprising since "posts on Mastodon" is not a good proxy for "has interests and conversational norms I like".

• Posts are limited in length, so instead of text-only versions of my posts with a link, like I do on FB (example), I posted a short summary and a link (example).

• Mostly it feels pretty normal, interface-wise, and things seem to work how I would expect.

I'm planning to start linking my posts there, at least for a while, and see how it goes.

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