He says X is for freedom of speech, and it is an everything app
but, freedom can’t exist without privacy.
Everything app = monopoly = all in one
Your posting this on KBin which implements the twitter style fediverse API and federates with Mastodon.
Click the microblog button … Behold twitter replacement
One does not have to switch from something that was never used.
Twitter has been a short form outrage machine since the beginning.
The interesting thing about Twitter is how it shows how a significant part of our society works. It is kind of about amplifying fame and suggesting that we should all cares about meaningless 240 character posts or what these guys think.
That news media types love Twitter is kind of an indictment of how news works.
Humans have neolithic hunter-gather brains and emotional reactions, medieval civil intuitions while using tech that borders on magic.
Twitter used to call itself the town square, and it is/was just like the square of old. Dominated by those that yelled the loudest and longest.
This is a wildly over generalized take.
Twitter was also an important tool for journalists and researchers worldwide. Military targets have come from Twitter posts. It is a reflection of a huge chunk of society. You may as well call all of internet technology “just a porn box” for how wildly over generalized that statement is. The reality is your generalization comes from arrogance. “I never engaged in such frivolous behavior”. You’re here now. Yes you have and yes you do.
Even your comment is the first cousin of outrage, it’s pure disdain. Nothing more or less, and exactly as valuable as outrage.
That’s not really true. When it first came out, before the ads, before the algorithm, when they embraced 3rd party apps with an open api, it was really great. It was full of techy personalities and interesting folks. Hashtags were fun to follow, live events were amazing in real time, so much more. That was before it got inundated with politics and celebrities though. I think that honeymoon phase only lasted a tiny while, then it all went downhill into the outrage machine pretty quickly. But for a quick minute there, it was glorious.
I’ve been on Mastodon since October last year.
Don’t get the official app, get Tusky. Then look under “federated” and follow the people you like. You can also search for a particular topic and follow that topic instead.
I second following hashtags when you first start out on Mastodon. It’s probably the best method of discovery right now, since there is no algorithm feeding you constantly.
I’ve never understood exactly what people get out of Twitter, and don’t understand why you’d need an alternative? Why not just use Lemmy as your alternative?
News and updates from specific companies/projects/people.
How people always fail to see the usefulness of the platform amazes me. There is nothing else like it for that purpose, moving elsewhere is difficult if all the accounts you are interested in are not also moving there.
Exactly, if you block enough and follow the right people the twitter feed is a pretty good place to get news and content. Hard to get that on mastodon since, well… no algorithm to actually show these things to you, no people to actually follow and no time to read everything chronologically.
Its definitely a lot worse now, but at its peak twitter algorithm worked pretty well, not that I ever used it, always did the standard chronological, but I wasn’t following 100s of accounts anyway.
Had to setup RSS again now, but its not the same as it used to be, harder to find decent blogs with the news/updates I want that support RSS.
Exactly.
Not everyone is on twitter for the political bullshit. Using banned words it’s easy to filter any political garbage. Twitter is quite useful. But I’m not there to convince or push my ideology on a bunch of polarized people. What a waste of energy.
News and updates from specific companies/projects/people
So let’s say I’m interested in tech. I got my news and updates from tech oriented websites/blogs, with the added benefits of tutorials and other articles also posted there, why would I want to use twitter?
Then that’s great for you. Setup RSS and you are away.
But not everyone has their own website/blog and they use twitter instead.
Mastodon, easily Mastodon. I love it!
If you like Mastodon but miss that Twitter layout, I’d suggest looking up Elk. It’s a web client version which can be installed, I’m very impressed so far.
Mastodon and Firefish have been good alternatives for me, not to mention, they’re part of the same fediverse as KBin
I tried out Mastodon last November and it was the perfect alternative for me. Connecting with more interesting people each week and I am loving the experience still to this day.
I have several friends that still use Twitter but discord has been the solution to keep in touch. Haven’t been able to delete my accounts yet.
You’re still on twitter? Why?
Currently looking for alternative I guess
Mastodon. Seems like the logical choice, considering you’re already on the fediverse, and a lot of people already moved to Mastodon when Musk bought Twitter.
I found it hard to get interaction
Download Tusky and find people in the federated tab. Also search for topics and follow those.
Start following tags and people, even if you don’t know them very well.
Can you do this in kbin?
People, yes. Tags, not directly but if you follow kbin magazines most have related tags attached and you’ll get microblog content matching those tags in your feed.
Yes click on microblogs and you will see a ton of mastodon content. If you see someone ypu want to follow, you can.
Also if you’re in a mag that has selected tags the microblog section of that mag is just whatever is posted on mastodons under those tags.
If we get enough people, you can get your interaction
An alternative to do what exactly? To just follow people? What about you follow no one?
DM, blog posting, no censorship plz
no censorship plz
Sorry but that is a farcical expectation. All sites will have rules about what can and cannot be posted and will have to follow the laws of the country the server is based in.
I’ve been using Mastodon a bit more, and I do also have a Threads account.
I’m curious: why are you using Mastodon when you’re a kbin user already? Why not just use the microblogging aspect of kbin? It’s even federated with Mastodon!
I was using Mastodon before Kbin.
That’s a good reason!
Nothing, because I never had a use for Twitter in the first place.
But the obvious fediverse alternative would be Mastodon. Decentralized, open source and you can use it even to communicate with kbin.Switched to Mastodon end of last year.
Mastodon obviously but also giving bluesky a shot
I want to move to bluesky so bad but I just can’t get a damn invite. I applied via email months ago. This is their moment & I kinda feel like the invite system is holding them back. (But I do understand why it was implemented.)
Edit: omg you guys are so sweet. I only just started using this place but I’m sold. You’re awesome!
I have 2 extra, will DM you
I think I replied to your DM but I’m still learning so just in case: YOU ARE AMAZING TYSM!!!
DM recieved and no problem! Hope you dig it over there. I haven’t dived in too deep but it seems promising
It’s very… dramatic over there, and I know it’s supposed to be a beta (trust me, I know) but there seems to be a lot of missing functionality. I pop in every few days and it’s like there a new moral outrage about bluesky each time.
I mostly follow people in the art/illustration community so I’m not really seeing what you’re complaining about, but to be fair your complaint could be levied against basically every big online community out there right now including the fediverse.
I am mostly judging by the “hot” feed, since I only follow a few people that I knew via Twitter, and to a significant degree you’re right-- there was the same kind of drama on kbin and lemmy when I joined. (I checked out threads for ~30 seconds so I can’t say about there) I don’t remember anything like that on Mastodon, but I’m sure it’s there. It seemed more rapid-fire on bluesky. Specifically there seemed to be a lot of hate against the devs on Bluesky for various reasons.
In any event, it’s a pretty big echo chamber right now but that’s to be expected while it’s in invite-only. I’m sure it will settle out when it opens up to the general public.
Remind me, get invites every 2 weeks and I can get you one.
Thank you so much!! I actually just got one but you are so sweet for offering!
I’ve also been wanting to try Bluesky would anyone have any invites available?
I just got in but when I get invites I’ll come back if nobody else has yet!
Moved my Mastodon account over to Firefish for the features.
Well I just found an Decentralized social platform called WireMin.
They claim they are for 100% censorship resistance &100%Privacy due to its decentralized structure.
Somehow decentralized can acheive that right? I mean no censorship.
I haven’t heard of WireMin until now. Looking at their FAQs, they have a lot of promises and not much to back them up. There’s a lot of red flags here
- Closed source. It appears to be totally proprietary, so you can’t look at the source code to ensure that they aren’t lying about their product
- They will be introducing microtransactions into their chat app; likely using cryptocurrency.
- It’s full of web3 crypto nonsense. It seems to me the only real plan to fund development is to be bought out by a large investor in the future.
Hard pass on that. Also 100% censorship resistance sounds good at face value until you realize that can easily be construed to mean that nazis are free to run wild there.
Hadn’t hear of this. Looked into it a bit.
The fact it requires a specific piece of software, even on desktop, puts it one step from (old) Twitter to me.
Even things like Discord - while very much not the same in other ways - has a web version that runs in a browser. Ditto the early 00’s instant messaging apps.
Also, the decentralisation seems to all be under the control of the one company(?). They say “no single entity controlling it” but there’s not much further detail. I might be mistaken, but it doesn’t seem like the Fediverse’s version of decentralisation, at least at first glance.
Moving further(?) into tinfoil hat territory: The founder’s name is very similar to that of a late Reddit founder, which is worth a double-take. Funny coincidence? Fake name? Either way might be playing on the coincidence? etc. etc. Hard to tell. Dude’s probably legit, right?
b) A few of the web links for it were in Chinese, but that’s probably a red herring. Translation suggests people in China are using it to get around certain internet issues.
Maybe I’m just suspicious of new things.
