Why I Moved to Fosstodon
Back in January I wrote Why I Use Librem Social. Librem Social is a social media network that is based on a fork of Mastodon. About a month after I wrote that, I decided to migrate to a different instance. Fosstodon is where I landed and I've quite enjoyed my experience there.
One of the reasons I moved is that the Librem Social fork was lacking features available in newer releases of Mastodon, and those maintaining it didn't seem in any great hurry to update it. For instance, I was using a third-party service to auto-delete older posts, but newer versions of Mastodon have that feature built in.
Another reason related to the above is that Purism seems to have abandoned or at least tabled its plans for Librem One, in general. Promised additions of new features like encrypted cloud storage, backups, and contact sync never materialized, and Purism themselves stopped promoting Librem One in their marketing and social media efforts.
So I decided to move to Fosstodon because it seemed that most of the people I had connected with and interacted with on a regular basis were there, they have great admins who stay on top of things and interact with the community, and I appreciated their server rules and moderation policies. It's been really great, and I have continued to meet new people and learn new things as part of a very nerdy, mostly gracious and helpful community.
I don't use FOSS (free-as-in-freedom and open source software) exclusively, but I do use it and believe in the philosophy behind free software. But I post about all kinds of things that interest me and find many Fosstodonians and people from the greater Fediverse share those interests.
A big difference Fosstodon has from Librem One is that local and federated timelines are enabled. I mostly stay away from the federated timeline because it's like drinking from a firehose and there is a higher probability you will encounter mindless or toxic content. But Fosstodon's local timeline is almost always on-point and even respectful, and good to check out every so often. Again, lots of fellow nerds like me sharing nerdy stuff. It's fun.
I tried getting back into Twitter again a few months ago. I mainly wanted to park on my username, but decided to try to post some things, follow some people, and see how it went. It was terrible. Ads everywhere. Nothing I posted, even with hashtags, seemed to by seen by hardly anyone. I guess the algorithm didn't consider my stuff interesting enough to put in front of people or buried me because I was a new account. Random promoted posts and junk cluttering my feed. It wasn't a pleasant experience. I was reminded why I eventually lost interest and deleted my account before.
Mastodon gives me a delightfully ad-free experience and more control over the content I want to see. I can easily block accounts or entire instances, as desired. My feed is always in chronological order, so I never miss anything if I don't want to. I can easily follow hashtags I'm interested in. But more importantly, I find I am able to more easily connect and engage with others. I'm able to meet people, learn new things, and express myself without being monetized or marketed to.
I'm glad that Mastodon exists, and that Fosstodon is a thing. It's a neat little corner of the Fediverse and I'm happy I landed there.
#100DaysToOffload (No. 32) #tech #socialmedia