December 16, 2022

My Muskbashing morning Mastodon migration missives

My Muskbashing morning Mastodon migration missives
By Hal Brown


 

About this ongoing blog: Those who follow my stories know I have a thing for alliterations so the title saying these will me morning missives was just an excuse to use the word "morning" and doesn't mean I will update this just in the morning. I hope to keep the general theme going until Twitter suffers the same fate of the Edsel.

I originally posted links to Mastodon addresses in the Fediverse (interconnected websites) where people could view or join. There were so many that I decided to put them on a separate blog (here) which I hope to keep updating as I find new ones.

Dec. 18 Updates:

Taylor Lorenz is an American journalist for The Washington Post. She was previously a technology reporter for The New York TimesThe Daily Beast, and Business Insider, and social media editor for the Daily Mail. She is particularly known for covering Internet culture. (Wikipedia)

From MSNBC: Taylor Lorenz on being suspended from Twitter.



This is what Musk is posting. Talk about self defeating, he is actually giving publicity to alternative platforms she people may not know about.

I assume his algorithm searches text only and at least not yet doesn't follow links or what is in a tweeted image. At least he hasn't caught me. Here's my latest tweet:



Previous posts in this series:

Musk's going back and forth with his suspending and un-suspending journalists led me to make this illustration:


He's demonstrating that he's rubber room ready. Sorry Elon, for your own protection there's no WiFi in the padded cells.... 

There's another alternative to Twitter which was just mentioned on the Ali Velshi show. It is called Post. 


Here's an article about Post:

You have to get on the waiting list to join. If you click below you can help me move higher up the waiting list:



UPDATED DEC 16 10:30 Pacific time

Click to enlarge, does not link to Twitter

I am hoping I get banned from Twitter for writing this with a link to the blog:
 When I made FOIA request to the FBI to see if I had a file because of my college anti-Vietnam war activity I was disappointed when I didn't. I was too small time I guess. I am but a minnow in the online ocean. Getting recognized here would be a good story .
 


I will post the most recent additions to this blog on the top of the page.

Here's a toot I just put on Mastodon

I wanted to see what was listed as trending on Twitter to add hashtags to my link to my Mastodon blog story which doesn't mention it and saw #ThursdayNightMassacre and found out that we have a new member @joyannreid who tweets are still there (see screen grab of her tweet) so a BIG welcome to her. Hard to track all the journalists moving here. Welcome to @pkrugman@mastod JenRubin@masto.ai and Rachel Maddow -  maddow@beta.mstdn.cf




Twitter suspended the accounts of more than half a dozen journalists from CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets Thursday evening, as company owner Elon Musk accused the reporters of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family.

The Post has seen no evidence that any of the reporters did so.

The suspensions came without warning or initial explanation from Twitter. They took place a day after Twitter changed its policy on sharing “live location information” and suspended an account, @ElonJet, that had been using public flight data to share the location of Musk’s private plane.

Many of the journalists suspended Thursday, including Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell, had been covering that rule change, as well as Musk’s claims that he and his family had been endangered by location sharing.

Twitter did not directly respond to questions about the suspensions. But Musk suggested on Twitter, without evidence, that the journalists had revealed private information about his family, known as doxing. “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he tweeted late Thursday.







I originally posted this on Twitter like this:
Now my new tweet looks like this:

I was hoping some of my followers would click the first tweet but hardly anyone even looked at it.

Changed the tweet to see if I can lure more people to click on the link without getting kicked off Twitter.

This blog, despite the title, really has to do with the alternative to Twitter named after a prehistoric beast. It is growing in popularity.
The Twitter bird evolved for a few years (read about it here) but until Elon Musk bought it the bird, with notable exceptions, like most birds mostly tweeted. Now with Musk, it is screeching. 

We don't know what a mastodon sounded like but presumably it was something like an elephant. You can listen to elephant sounds here. Mostly they trumpet and this is how they are depicted in most movies. They rumble when communicating with each other, they also roar, bark, snort, and grunt. Tooting isn't on the list, but why quibble. I think the term "toot" conveys that Mastodon wants to be a civil and respectful town square.

Not tooting yet. Click above to create an account.
Not ready. Learn more about it here.
Excerpt:

Mastodon is an innovative open-source and self-hostable microblogging platform similar to Twitter or Tumblr. Its development was started in 2016 by Eugen Rochko and since then Mastodon constantly attracted new users and communities looking for a social environment independent from big company logics and censorship.

Mastodon is not a Twitter clone: by concept, structure and functionalities it is something completely different and much more interesting!

This page is an introduction to Mastodon’s basic concepts and features which you should know to fully understand how Mastodon works. It is structured in independent sections which you can jump to from the Index (see the link in the upper-left side), but it can also be read as a single text.

The site also hosts an Instances search engine that you can use to find the Mastodon instance that best fits your needs.


I've posted the link to this blog on Mastodon and have been working to add as many links to Mastodon servers as I can find for those who want to get a feel for what it is like, and hopefully if they like it they will join. Scroll down to see the links.

This is what Twitter is doing to those who tweet a link to Mastodon 

This is what someone tooted (the same as a Twitter tweet) on Mastodon:

If you’re wondering about Mastodon’s impact, Twitter is now automatically marking links to mastodon as “sensitive” (aka dangerous) and forcing users who get them to “appeal” the claim. In case Elon didn’t seem desperate enough for you already…

Below is a screen grab of what they tooted with their identity blocked out by me because there's no established convention or policy there about sharing the identity of someone who posts there.


If you have followers on Twitter (I have 154) who you want to be able to know you are leaving there and moving to Mastodon you may be able tweet without running afoul of Elon's attempt to keep anyone from finding you. Just figure out a way to persuade your followers to click my link without alerting the evil genius.

If you want to promote Mastodon on Twitter you may be able to avoid their algorithm tagging their tweet by 1) not using the word Mastodon and 2) trying to outfox them by tweeting something innocuous which will also clue in your followers that you are doing something that you want them to know about.

I recommend you that if you have things to share that don't fit into the word limit for a toot that you try out a free website builder.  I  have used Google Blogger since 2012. It costs extra to have dedicated web address. I chose a dot org after my name because dot com was taken. I am an organization of one. If you have a website you can write anything at any length, include pictures if you like, and put a link to your page in a toot.

Most popular web building platforms have a free version and some you have to pay for extra features. Popular platforms are Wordpress, Weebly, Wix, and GoDaddy. Musk said he was open to buying another website platform, Substack, another popular platform. They weren't interested

 I can only see how many people looked at the tweet (impressions), 17 so far, but without paying I can't see how many people click the link (engagements). Before Musk took over a tweeter could see both for free.

This is what I tooted on Mastodon:

Click above to enlarge.




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