Dr. Guillermo Power @gpowerf@social.cleverlibre.org

Seems that federated social networks like Mastodon offer an opportunity for people to curate & nurture micro-communities vs. optimizing to “be social” with the masses. It’s certainly a different mindset than other major social networks, where collecting followers, likes & other forms of engagement are promoted. If there’s a #Twexit, I anticipate growing pains as many will naturally assume that <this new thing> should work like <that other thing>

Still learning. #WomenInTech #BlackMastodon

Just a small test in Atari BASIC.

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

One of my favourite places. #nature #introduction

I do like how like Twitter in the old days you can see everything on here if you go to the federated timeline.

Centralized social media had trained me to think in a certain way. "If you don't like it, go build your own..." is the popular phrase. The mentality seems to be that one central entity has to control it all, or social media can't exist.

Joyfully, #mastodon has proven that to be false.

I hadn't imagined anything like this could ever work this well. Pretty amazing. Props to the #fosstodon admins, @kev @mike @cooper @Tay0 @ru @grueproof. This is a great place to be!

I am so happy to be here.

@gpowerf 🙋‍♂️ #XCBASIC fanboy here! I made my very first game with it for the #C64 and I had the audacity of putting it on itch.io! 😄 All things considered, it didn't go bad!

Since then I had the silly idea of joining an itch.io retro jam which ends next January...

Some new bits to play with #electronics

The best computer Atari ever made, the 800XL! #atari #atari8bit #atari800xl

My mum's sewn a load of loading screen boarders into a tshirt for my birthday 😍🤩😍

Recent mastodon influx be like: This party is amazing! Much better than that prior party!

5 minutes later: The party food should be served differently. 🤣

I implore other newbies to recall we’re coming into a home that’s been around since 2016, not an empty room. Part of why we love it is all the work people before us did setting up the party in a nice way. Maybe let’s defer to them a bit on norms?

Also, please use CW for political discussions, especially in the US this week. It’s better.

My Twitter following is steadily declining. I wonder if it has anything to do with the #TwitterMigration.

You liked it a lot, so here’s more old computers

6,254,642 accounts
+5,437 in the last hour
+133,929 in the last day
+454,566 in the last week

I'll admit, I'm already more of a fan of this decentralized dwelling over the bird site. Just feels more community based, and, most importantly, people actually see my poor excuse for jokes.

Never stop being this nice, Mastodon.

This site shows you how the quote retweet function is actually kind of destructive.