Twitter v. Mastodon v. Micro.blog
Twitter right now is mainly about Twitter but also a little about Mastodon. And Mastodon is mainly about Mastodon but also a lot about Twitter. Both places seem to be pretty chaotic, but here at micro.blog @manton & co. are keeping things smooth and steady. It helps that there don’t seem to be many drama-addicted folks around here.
-- Alan Jacobs
Yeah, agreed. I hadn't been on Twitter in while, but jumped to Mastodon just to check things out and see if it could operate differently than Twitter. My observations:
- Mastodon is better than Twitter in many ways. Built in RSS feeds for accounts, ActivityPub compatible so it's genuinely federated, no quote tweeting, better moderation (similar to the better Reddit communities).
- Mastodon doesn't quite live up to what I want it to be. What I wanted was, perhaps, a way for people to be self-hosted but have a local space where that stuff got sent and you could just check in and see what others are thinking or up to.
- Lots of people at Mastodon are just talking about Twitter. I actually had to filter out posts that mention the word, but then there are people that call it the "bird site" or talk about Elon or whatever. I want Mastodon to be more than that but maybe that will take some time.
I'm also not convinced Mastodon won't become a sort of Twitter 2.0. Maybe not quite as hateful or outrageous, but still chaotic. I've been considering trying micro.blog instead to see if that would function closer to what I want out of the web. It seesm like it's possible that service is closer than Mastodon.
Tagged: open web,
