For me Mastodon + my "Say Hi" calls every few days + groups Signal are a much more useful and less toxic combination. I miss forums.
Now, more about Mastodon itself:
In short, Mastodon is less toxic and the feed doesn't artificially amplify content made to generate engagement.
People tend to mistake free speech and discourse artificially shaped to pump ads in your eyeballs and that shows. Your content IS moderated but more subtly, and your mod is an advertising company.
On Mastodon, you'll _still_ see weird crap on the federated feed (including controversial stuff, like xenophobic content), but quickly you'll realise that the ratio of truly disturbing, aggressive or xenophobic content is much, much lower.
This is partially due to:
- the fact that algorithmic feeds rely on controversial, divisive, emotional responses as they turn into higher engagement.
- the fact that people are still weird, but _way less_ evil and mean.
You can think of Mastodon as a mix of an internet forum and a chat from 2005. For instance, the default client UX can be clunky (no sweet ad revenue $$), but it doesn't go in your way like the dark patterns on Twitter (e.g. the chronological feed resetting to the algorithmic one ever x days).
Also, you can always change the default client. Elk is neat.
Mastodon will perform worse in terms of reach, but better in terms of engagement (let's appreciate the irony here).
One of the comments says:
> The best alternative to twitter is no twitter
And I 100% agree with that. Better go outside and touch grass, pet a dog. I wish internet forums were more utilised, because I use micro-blogging mostly for announcements regarding my projects and this format encourages shallow discourse.
Edit: be more specific about the UX issues pertaining mostly to the default client. Thanks @wowfunhappy