I created a profile on Mastodon in 2019, but haven’t done anything with it. I’d check in every now and again to see how the platform was developing and, while I was always intrigued with the notion of an open source microblogging ecosystem, it never really captured my attention. So for a while now, it’s been little more than a curiosity. Twitter has pretty much been my go-to social media platform for discovery, and I’ve mostly been very happy with the value that I’ve been getting from it.
But over the past year or so, I’ve noticed something in my Twitter feed that’s been bothering me. If I liked a couple of posts related to art, I’d start seeing more art-related posts. Which made me interact with more art-related posts. Which eventually caused my entire feed to be taken over by art-related posts. I like art, but not to the exclusion of everything else.
The reason I joined Twitter in the first place was because it allowed me to follow interesting people who were sharing things that I found interesting. The process of discovery was possible because of the serendipity in my feed that surfaced new ideas. Lately though, my feed is all the same. And I find that I have to consciously make choices about what posts to interact with, knowing that every interaction is a vote towards driving my entire feed in that direction.
So I’ve decided to commit to Mastodon for a while and see how I like it. I was initially worried that I’d be leaving behind a fairly sizeable social graph that can’t be carried over from Twitter. All the connections, likes, retweets, and so on, can’t come with. But then I realised that starting over is its own serendipity, and that building a new social graph on a platform that works differently is liberating.
I’m not going to do anything drastic like delete my Twitter account, and at some point I’ll get around to linking this blog to Mastodon, and Mastodon to Twitter, so that I’m cross-posting between all of them. I’m not quite ready to ditch Twitter. Apparently, there’s some internal politics that may lead to some big changes on the platform. Who knows where the future of Twitter lies?
It’s taking me a little longer to figure out the little differences between Mastodon and Twitter, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. If you’re interested in exploring what it has to offer, why not start an account, let me know your handle, and we can learn together. You can find me at https://mastodon.social/@michael_rowe.