I tried Mastodon, never got comfortable there. I went to BlueSky. Jay Graber serves as the company's CEO, while Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and XMPP creator Jeremie Miller sit on its board of directors. The format is identical to Twitter, and there are nature, bug and bird feeds in addition to any and everything else.. People there seem more tuned in, probably because it is still growing and maybe there are less distractions. Doesn't seem glitchy. I have a few codes if anyone would like to try it.
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Alternatives to Twitter / X for birders (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter kb57
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That one has gone now
There is a nice feed over there. If you post bird images, use #birds then the feather emoji at the end of your post. I add the leaf emoji also. I am Queenie's over there.
malaysiabirdwatching
Beginner or Bird Junkie.... still unsure
Thanks for sharing, I was on Bluesky, but none of my friends were there, so I just left it as is. My name there is: David Hogan Jr or birdwatching.bsky.social
gmomchilov
Member
Mastodon birdon.social admin here. I was never really on twitter as it appeared overwhelming - like a propaganda attack. So my opinion is biased and could be misinformed.
Mastodon and other decentralised federated platforms are the only way you ensure nobody else will be curating what you see on your feed because there isn't and will never be an "algorithm". On all other commercially run platforms you as a user are the product - what advertisers are paying the platform for. Don't forget these companies are run for a profit.
Regarding birdon.social - it's still in its infancy and it may never get a critical mass of users. That is irrelevant, though - I follow people and hashtags from a plethora of other servers. It'd be nice if the local feed was rich and fun but if we never get there, so be it. I will always run and admin that server free of charge.
Threads have recently started playing around with the federated protocol Mastodon is using, so tight integration between the two might very soon be possible.
In a nutshell, my opinion is Mastodon and decentralised alternatives are about building community, X (twitter), Blueskye and other commercially run sites are about making a profit. Personally, I choose freedom. That is why I started birdon.social.
Please, don't take my post personally.
Mastodon and other decentralised federated platforms are the only way you ensure nobody else will be curating what you see on your feed because there isn't and will never be an "algorithm". On all other commercially run platforms you as a user are the product - what advertisers are paying the platform for. Don't forget these companies are run for a profit.
Regarding birdon.social - it's still in its infancy and it may never get a critical mass of users. That is irrelevant, though - I follow people and hashtags from a plethora of other servers. It'd be nice if the local feed was rich and fun but if we never get there, so be it. I will always run and admin that server free of charge.
Threads have recently started playing around with the federated protocol Mastodon is using, so tight integration between the two might very soon be possible.
In a nutshell, my opinion is Mastodon and decentralised alternatives are about building community, X (twitter), Blueskye and other commercially run sites are about making a profit. Personally, I choose freedom. That is why I started birdon.social.
Please, don't take my post personally.
Scozmos
Well-known member
Good to hear from you hear @gmomchilov I'm also on birdon.social and enjoying it so far, still getting used to the quirks of hashtags etc.
I don't think the local server idea works very well in mastodon. It would be nice to sit on a server with birding content posted, but birders post about lots of other topics, and non-birders sometimes post about birds. The local feed just ends up being a sub section of on topic posts, and lots of off topic stuff.
If there was an option to exclude your post from the local server feed if you were posting "off topic" that would be really good.
If I started again on mastodon, I'd just join the server which has the strictest admin around blocking other servers with primarily malicious and unwanted content, and just follow hashtags.
If there was an option to exclude your post from the local server feed if you were posting "off topic" that would be really good.
If I started again on mastodon, I'd just join the server which has the strictest admin around blocking other servers with primarily malicious and unwanted content, and just follow hashtags.
To me "Content is King". A platform can be a federation, a hegemony or a benevolent dictatorship but if the content isn't there then I don't really see the point of using it.
Following the Muskification of Twitter and the emergence of all the alternatives I am now on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, and still Twitter. I find myself looking at Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads once every couple of days in search of new, interesting content often in vain, but I look at Twitter multiple times a day and find buckets of stuff of interest.
It might not be what folk want to hear but content-wise none of the new pretenders can currently hold a candle to Twitter.
Just looked at the usage data on my phone. In the last 7 days...
Mastodon - 4 minutes
Threads - 4 minutes
Bluesky - 6 minutes
Twitter - 252 minutes
Following the Muskification of Twitter and the emergence of all the alternatives I am now on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, and still Twitter. I find myself looking at Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads once every couple of days in search of new, interesting content often in vain, but I look at Twitter multiple times a day and find buckets of stuff of interest.
It might not be what folk want to hear but content-wise none of the new pretenders can currently hold a candle to Twitter.
Just looked at the usage data on my phone. In the last 7 days...
Mastodon - 4 minutes
Threads - 4 minutes
Bluesky - 6 minutes
Twitter - 252 minutes
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gmomchilov
Member
I believe specialised Mastodon servers should be built around community not topics. Astrodon is a good example. I don't mind people sharing content from other albeit "similar" topics - i.e. science, nature, botany, bugs ... I might find things that I didn't know I might be interested in thanks to other users who share at least one of my interests. Kind of like "other users with similar tastes also find this interesting".
Can't do that with hashtags.
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gmomchilov
Member
True. As I said - everybody makes their personal choice depending on what they value and what their convictions are.
You, like many people, don't see the point of using platforms where you can't consume all the content you need. I, like many others, don't see the point of being treated like a product and fed information I didn't ask for.
Isn't that a synonym for curiosity?
gmomchilov
Member
Personally, more like brainwash.
Again, Twitter is run for a profit by people who are way smarter than I am.
Well yeah ok. Community is a better word than topics.
But a lot of people don't belong to a single community. They come to social media to participate in a multitude of communities. And the multiple communities, be it sport, local news, cookery, lifestyle, politics all pollute the local server feed.
Segregating people at the login I don't think works.
And I think I'm right, because mastodon itself is forming with a list of overlapping communities all split different ways. Some regional, some sociopolitical, some current affairs, some lifestyle, some hobbies. I'm torn between 5 of the categories in that server list , so 80% of what I post is in the wrong community, wrong local server feed.
The answer could be multiple accounts. But how complex does this need to go?!
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gmomchilov
Member
Yep, multiple accounts is not the answer, I think you are right.
In the final analysis the idea of decentralisation is - well, lack of centralisation and that is the greatest benefit. Perhaps that is the only real benefit.
I wonder whether eventually most users would clump up into just a handful of servers based on moderation policies, as you suggest.
