I’ve been on Mastodon a week now and thought I should write a little bit about the experience.

There’s not much to write about. It works. There are interesting people to follow, I’m confident that my data isn’t being collected, and my feed is always interesting because someone else’s algorithm isn’t controlling what I see.

It also ends up that when I wrote that when I attempted to use Mastodon it was ‘like trying to shag an unwilling octopus’, it had a lot to do with the people who landed there from my elder networks and didn’t really explain anything – leaving me wondering about which server to join, whether I needed to build my own server, etc.

It’s actually quite easy. It doesn’t really matter which server you’re on – I’m on social.mastodon – because they all connect through the Fediverse, which is to say that they are decentralized.

Relative to other social networks.

That last part is so important to me. When I was active on Facebook, I saw a very large decline over the years of quality content that I wanted to see. This was underlined by the latest discovery that Facebook is spamming users.

Twitter, or if you’re a Musk-bro, ‘X’, is much the same thing. What’s hilarious is that both of those social networks are trying to train their generative AIs and have the worst platforms because of AI and algorithms. Web 2.0 meets AI, chaos ensues.

LinkedIn deserves mention here since so many people use it, but… as far as professional networking, I don’t think it counts as much as building real connections outside of the leering eyes of Microsoft, and being asked to help write articles for them which I’m sure will be used to train their AI just so I can have a cool title. Nope, no thanks. Hit me in the wallet.

Pros and Cons.

I have yet to have a negative experience with anyone on Mastodon. In fact, when you respond to someone’s post for the first time, I get prompted to basically be courteous, and so I expect other people are as well.

I do miss being able to comment on something I retransmit – in Mastodon speak, that’s boosting. I’m not sure why that is, but I’ve found it’s not something I actually need.

The only thing that Mastodon lacks so far are connections with some family and friends who haven’t moved to Mastodon. That’s simply a factor of inertia, much like in the 1990s many people thought ‘The Internet’ was AOL, which Facebook has mimicked pretty well.

In all, I’m finding Mastodon worthwhile, and much less twitchy than the other social networks, largely because I’m not seeing crap I don’t want to see.

If I have a quiet mind to do other things and a social network is in the background, I consider that a win. Mastodon is a win.