Ask HN: How many HN users are moving to Mastodon from Twitter?
Firstly, I used to love Twitter!
However, I will move to Mastodon due to the recent spate of haphazard rule changes, bugs, and unstable systems. I have noticed many problems, especially with the Android Twitter app.
What is the take of the HN community on moving to Mastodon, especially after Paul G was banned? I deleted my Twitter account years ago, I just didnt use it anymore. I was on Facebook for a while, but I hated every minute I was there, so I also deleted that. I signed up on mastodon a year or two ago, and it's the most positive experience I've had online in a very long time. It's fun, like MySpace was in the beginning. Mastodon is interesting because it isn't one thing, it's many unique communities that talk to each other. My home server is full of people like me, it's a strong community where people feel safe and comfortable. However, most of my follows are from outside my server. It's an environment where I can be my actual, genuine self, which is a nice experience these days. I think mastodon has captured the spirit of what social media was originally meant to be. Without the pressure of trying to extract money from your users, the users are more free to express themselves. It's the way things used to be before "don't be evil" went down the toilet. Mastodon is good, and whether or not it "replaces" Twitter (which is not and never was the goal), it's going to stick around for a long time. Try moving to nowhere. You'll be surprise how little you actually need such platforms. I have been using less and less of Twitter for the past few years, then the recent massive move of the infosec community to infosec.exchange / ioc.exchange made the switch easy enough. After 15 years on Twitter, moved to Mastodon about a month ago (I still have the Twitter account, in case Musk comes to his senses and divests). So far, I'm a fan; it feels a bit like Twitter did in the early days, which is generally better than Twitter today. The mobile clients leave something to be desired, but apparently the Tweetbot people are making one. I canned my Twitter account the day I first heard of the pending change in ownership Not for some grand reason... I just realized I never used it or benefited from it I won't be moving to mastodon but it's more that I'm tired of the format than anything specific to the platform Replying to myself to expand, since I can't edit now I'm actively trying to work myself away from 'short form' content. YT Shorts, TikTok, image memes - that kind of thing. I don't like how my attention span has wavered over the last decade or so, and I feel a lot of this has to do with it. HN/Reddit are still here for the time being, as they at least have articles with some depth... and replies are afforded enough characters for actual conversation Under this light, I'm left feeling that Twitter/Mastodon are just an engagement machine, bare minimum to have something to engage with to move 'currency' around I want to be better off from my time here, and I don't think I have I left twitter without signing up for mastodon. Mastodon seems kind of lame, and user-hostile and I don't expect it to ever be mainstream. Oh really? What other options do you recommend? Not who your asking but I suspect I know; none Twitter being a dumpster fire doesn't mean we need to find a new dumpster I moved, along with what seems a good proportion of science twitter (the Fauci tweet was obviously a big push for many in the field). A nice benefit is that many of the 'big on twitter' scientists whose professional self worth is tied to their follower count have stayed put. Be careful what you wish for. If random rule changes are something that you don't like, you certainly won't love whole instances banning you and/or your instance for not aligning perfectly with their highly individual and often contradictory quirks. For me, personally, it's not just the rule changes, but also the experience itself getting progressively worse and worse, especially on Android. For instance, Twitter Spaces has always bugged out for me on my Android app(even pre-Elon). It just feels like a second-class citizen... This is the reason I feel Nostr may overtake Mastodon given some time. I never used Twitter, but I did sign up for a Mastodon account recently, in case the mass exodus from Twitter makes it an interesting place to be. It used to be common to hop along from one social network to the next, after all! I moved. UX is not as bad as expected. All info/people i am interested in have also moved except a few who switched to substack instead. Twitter is still quite a show but i suspect people will grow tired. I've been feeling burned out on social media for a while even before Elon hit Twitter. I have very few real connections on Twitter so it's just been a consumption platform for me. Considering to let it die and take a break from things. I'm not eager to go chasing content creators to various different platforms. I need more platforms to watch as much as I need a swift kick to the head. I did not interact much either but got some solid information and some great book recommendations. I give pre elon twitter props for that. Twitter has been a mixed bag anyway, for me at least. You decide to follow some tech people like uncle bob and realise he's a boomer with questionable takes and posts bait for attention and engagement. The vast majority of tech-twitter are misguided juniors, or grifters selling coding courses, e-books etc. to those juniors. I enjoyed the sneak-peak into people lives, I didn't feel like following highly filtered technical blogs that tend methodologies the authors. Now I can see into people lives, pets, opinions, etc.. If you're not into that I get it. Otherwise for grifters, they're a real problem, but a highly curated, chronological timeline gets rid of them almost entirely. I took the opportunity to delete my account. Finally one less social media to follow. I need to delete Facebook too, but maybe later. I also created my account on Mastodon today. I, for one, definitely am. Twitter is going crazy (or Elon is), but signs are not looking good. I'm not.