I miss the old Twitter. In the before it had the right mix of slightly unhinged viral content, and discoverability and community via hashtags. I made friends and went on road trips to watch ice hockey. I found fellow nerds at tech conferences. I went to meetups (crazy, I know).
But that place is gone. It no longer exists. It died a while ago. Beyond hashtags and locations I always curated my feeds heavily with lists, so I avoided the worst of the algorithm collapse. Also my account was always tiny with a tiny number of followers, so I never had crazy replies or people yelling at me (also, man, so all that privilege as well).
But I miss it.
I don’t blame anyone who is still there. I am not deleting my account (only to keep the name) even if I removed all my content.
I opened a Mastodon account years ago and started using it again. I like it. I like the politeness. I like the self censoring and moderation and the use of content warnings. It allows me to choose what I do or don’t want to see. I like the chronological feed, but at the same time I do miss an algorithm for discovery things. I know I kind of have my own algorithm based on who I follow and what they repost.
But there is still a barrier to entry and there are people I do want to follow who will never join - which is fine.
I opened a Threads account because I was kind of hoping that was where a bunch of Twitch Streamers and content creators would end up - but that has happened yet, and I am not sure it will. I have found a bunch of photographers, and I think I get to see more of their photos on Threads than I do in Instagram. The following feed on Threads is fine - but the algorithmic feed is just a dumpster fire of content farming ‘viral videos.’
I opened a Bluesky account. For a while it was the destination of choice for shit posting - something that didn’t make its way to Mastodon or even Threads. With the recent waves of exits Bluesky looks like it might actually be gaining some traction. It has a “better” mix of non-nerds and content creators. The feed is not just content farms, and there is a level of horniness and shit posting that isn’t on Mastodon.
The reality is I will scroll most of the of social feeds, and through the magic of apps like Openvibe and Croissant I will keep cross posting.
Mastodon for some nerdy stuff, posting the daily word games, and being able to scroll aus.social.. Threads for photos, people I know from IG, and F1 spoilers the morning after a race before I’ve had a chance to watch it. Bluesky for news (😳), shit posting, and trying to get a vibe from an algorithm, maybe?