However, I will move to Mastodon due to the recent spate of haphazard rule changes, bugs, and unstable systems. I have noticed many problems, especially with the Android Twitter app.
What is the take of the HN community on moving to Mastodon, especially after Paul G was banned?
I signed up on mastodon a year or two ago, and it's the most positive experience I've had online in a very long time. It's fun, like MySpace was in the beginning.
Mastodon is interesting because it isn't one thing, it's many unique communities that talk to each other. My home server is full of people like me, it's a strong community where people feel safe and comfortable. However, most of my follows are from outside my server. It's an environment where I can be my actual, genuine self, which is a nice experience these days.
I think mastodon has captured the spirit of what social media was originally meant to be. Without the pressure of trying to extract money from your users, the users are more free to express themselves. It's the way things used to be before "don't be evil" went down the toilet.
Mastodon is good, and whether or not it "replaces" Twitter (which is not and never was the goal), it's going to stick around for a long time.
Not for some grand reason... I just realized I never used it or benefited from it
I won't be moving to mastodon but it's more that I'm tired of the format than anything specific to the platform
I'm actively trying to work myself away from 'short form' content. YT Shorts, TikTok, image memes - that kind of thing.
I don't like how my attention span has wavered over the last decade or so, and I feel a lot of this has to do with it.
HN/Reddit are still here for the time being, as they at least have articles with some depth... and replies are afforded enough characters for actual conversation
Under this light, I'm left feeling that Twitter/Mastodon are just an engagement machine, bare minimum to have something to engage with to move 'currency' around
I want to be better off from my time here, and I don't think I have
Twitter being a dumpster fire doesn't mean we need to find a new dumpster
A nice benefit is that many of the 'big on twitter' scientists whose professional self worth is tied to their follower count have stayed put.
For instance, Twitter Spaces has always bugged out for me on my Android app(even pre-Elon). It just feels like a second-class citizen...
Twitter is still quite a show but i suspect people will grow tired.
You decide to follow some tech people like uncle bob and realise he's a boomer with questionable takes and posts bait for attention and engagement.
The vast majority of tech-twitter are misguided juniors, or grifters selling coding courses, e-books etc. to those juniors.
If you're not into that I get it. Otherwise for grifters, they're a real problem, but a highly curated, chronological timeline gets rid of them almost entirely.