Is anyone using Mastodon here?
I’ve spent most of the day setting up my own instance with a Raspberry Pi and I think it’s working.
I also lucked out and got on Tapbot’s Ivory iOS app beta which is pretty nice.
You can find me at:
@Garry@mastodon.pettet.social
Yes, Mastodon handles are awful.
I do share the same Leor’s opinion:
I finally got around to signing up.
@graffitisuite@mastodon.social
I think the jury is still out when it comes to Mastodon.
I was / am not a big Twitter user by any stretch of the imagination and I certainly think the sign up process / onboarding for Mastodon is terrible but I think with it gaining traction in the mainstream media improvements will come quickly.
One thing to like about Mastodon is that it is possible to own your data much more comprehensively (albeit that is only going to apply to a small minority of nerds).
Apps like Ivory greatly simplify Mastodon and make it feel much more like Twitter so it will be interesting to see how things progress when that comes out of beta.
Not really “using” at the moment, but some time ago I created my handle: @DeltaworX@mastodon.online
If some day it goes mainstream, I’ll will think about it. Right now it may be just a fad.
I’m experimenting with it. Picking a server seems to bewilder non-technical people. It’s not a very consequential decision if you’re picking a server that has a fair number of users and has been around a few years (from what I can tell, migrating to a different server is not a push-button operation). From there I set the various configuration options so it’s more twitter-like. For example the default is to continually refresh and in the federated view things keep scrolling out of view. So I set it to refresh upon request only.
I don’t want to enrich the coffers of the Twitter assclown, but then again, I wasn’t that committed to it in the first place. I used Twitter mainly as news aggregator and to follow a few informative accounts such as virologists posting about the pandemic, etc. I am finding acceptable alternative sources (sometimes the same ones) on Mastodon. I have to block a lot more on Mastodon, paradoxically. People posting manga porn, things like that. Somewhere there’s a setting where you can filter for just English posts but some Japanese ones leak through anyway and I block those just to reduce clutter.
As many people, I’m a reader, not a publisher/poster. I go were people are, I read what the mainstream outlets of information publishes. Such place, currently, is not Mastodon.
Find some important tech company or tech news page, scroll to where they show their “social” [follow us] links, and you find icons like:
See? No
“Elephants”.
That’s why I won’t move. Nothing political or personal taste involved.
Mine is @tekcor@mastodon.social. I don’t really use it yet for the same reasons already listed: there just aren’t enough accounts I want to follow. I’m ready to make the switch, but it’s not time.
Looks like an update to usenet news 
Well since Twitter has killed third party clients, I guess I’ve fully moved over…
I’ve been moving everything I can from Twitter to Mastodon. I wish that Xojo’s Twitter posts were echoed in Mastodon. (A Xojo-hosted Mastodon server would be great!)
I moved everything I had on Twitter into the round file. Along with my account. I make sparing use of FaceBook but nothing else.
I just set up there now (in my 3rd attempt)
On-boarding is really really terrible. Am not sure how much main steam this can be until they do something about that. (Like for example having big central server where you could just start…and go, then you could just move if you needed or wanted)
I just had my 15th Twitter birthday, and as the site slowly dies I really don’t see myself moving to another microblogging platform. It has to be easy, and everyone keeps saying Mastodon isn’t, and that’s enough to stop me from being interested.
Y’all have access to me here if you need me.
I don’t plan on “moving”…but setting up base there in addition to the dying twitter seemed logical to gain maybe more audience “if it is catching some ground”.
Only takes me 2 seconds to paste the same post there as I put in Twitter.
Me too, September 2007. Onboarding is not hard, but you have to pick a provider like you would an email provider. That’s it. The most popular is mastodon.social. But it’s lonely on Mastodon. I’ve been able to follow a few of the strangers that I used to follow, but I think I’ve only found two people there that I’ve actually met. And none of the brands / apps that I’d follow for updates. It’s a chicken and egg problem. People won’t move because the population isn’t there, and the population isn’t there because people aren’t moving.
Another issue is handles. On one hand, brands can own just about any handle they want. Xojo could use @hello@xojo.social if they registered the domain and setup their own instance. But they couldn’t use @hello@xojo.com because Mastodon has to “own” the whole domain / subdomain. This makes it easier to impersonate, as there’s no verification system. You can display verified links on your profile, so that’s something I guess.
Its more complicated than that, since mastodon.social does not take new members any more.
(I hit that problem in my 3rd attempt today)
So then I had to weed through all the servers, with different rules… And I use it to announce new versions, and many servers have strictly all ads banned, so that made me wonder if Announcing new versions were ads. So I had to spend a lot of time weeding through it to find suitable place. Also taking into account that I wanted it to be place that I know will not just disappear. (I do not know enough about how mastodon works to fully realize what happens if servers disappears)
I did relinquish xojo.io to them, would be an interesting place to set up shop.
Mastodon.social is sometimes taking new users, sometimes not. You could always sign up with a different instance and then move it later if you want.
Best iOS Mastodon client so far is Ice Cubes. Ivory also just came out, it’s also very solid and smooth, but after using both for a few days, Ice Cubes still wins (UI is cleaner and simpler and follows HIG guidelines better).