And for the love of God, don’t blindly take it voting tips from Elon Musk.
Walking towards decentralization
Twitter may be much smaller than other social networking sites, but it plays an important role in public discussion. It’s focused: You log on and get caught up in a messy, endless timeline where political elites and the media ruminate on the agenda of the day. “Although the real future may lie in a set of more specialized, interconnected communities served by Mastodon, Discord and others,” said Chris Riley, senior fellow for internet governance. at Tech Policy Press wrote last week“Twitter will retain a big advantage: Centralized discovery and sharing are still very powerful services and difficult to replicate in a more distributed system.”
However, now is the time to explore other social media services. Mastodon there is a rapid increase in users, because Twitter users flock to it. (Though it’s not clear how many people are still using Twitter – I’m guessing a lot.) The project launched in 2017 as a non-profit, open-source self-hosted network of servers. It mimics Twitter’s microblogging timeline and allows for likes and amplification of posts; users can view posts both on their own local, server-specific timeline, and on the broader “linked” timeline.
If all of that sounds confusing, that’s because it is. To register, you must first choose a server, and the registration process is slow and error-prone. But right now Mastodon has the budding energy of the party that Twitter lacks. As Justin Pot put it in WIRED’s Timely Guidance, Mastodon is “What would Linux be like if it were a social network… The Internet has become collectivized. It’s refreshing to use a service that hasn’t been A/B tested to death. Also see: BlueSky Social (powered by Jack Dorsey), Cohost and Counter.
There will be other efforts to build social networks that act as a digital city square. Mass adoption will require at least some easy-to-use features, plus cultured adoption. But in 2022, maybe an exact replica of Twitter isn’t what we really want or what society really needs. As Mastodon user Chris Bides put it, “Most people probably shouldn’t want a Twitter alternative. Now is a good time to focus on what we really like about interactions on the internet and start from there. “
Don’t Pay for Twitter
I happen to be a subscriber to the original version of Twitter’s premium tier, Blue, which means I paid $5 a month for access to features like being able to undo or edit tweets. Now, under Musk, Twitter Blue has turned into an $8-a-month move target, a service that offers green check verification for a fee. The implementation has been chaotic (you’ll notice the repeated usage of the word).
On Saturday, Twitter was updated in Apple’s App Store with a note saying that users who sign up can receive a blue check “just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you’ve followed.” track”. Now the relaunch of Twitter Blue has reported as delayed until November 9, after the US midterm elections.
