Twitter’s implosion beginning in November 2022 was the beginning of something beautiful: my first foray into Twitter’s largest competitor, Mastodon. Here’s why I’m on Mastodon and loving it.
No more overreliance on a single billionaire
Mastodon is not owned by any one person, it’s a collection of thousands of servers which are run mostly by volunteers — a good reason to offer the person who runs your server a payment by PayPal, if you decide you enjoy Mastodon. The server I chose, Mstdn.social, is run by a Dutch techie whose values I respect and who doesn’t tolerate any intolerance on the service. The wildly erratic behavior of Twitter’s CEO this past autumn has not only led to a hemorrhaging of followers from Twitter, it’s also underscored why free and open conversation is safest when it’s on a decentralized network like Mastodon instead of locked inside a wholly-owned plaything owned by a billionaire. Once you are on Mastodon, you can read posts from and share posts with any other Mastodon user, on any other server.
Pleasant and random interactions with interesting people
Writers — pre-published, traditionally published and self-published – are on Mastodon in their thousands. I use hashtags like #MiddleGrade and #WritingCommunity and discover interesting chat on everything from writing process to favourite reads. I’m still blogging on this site about things like revising my work in progress, but I also enjoy throwing out my thoughts to the writing community on Mastodon and getting their insights on how they work.
Social media joy once again
Joyful hashtags like #mosstodon decorate my feed with pictures of beauty: who wouldn’t like to see the vibrant green of mossy nature photographs first thing in the morning? And yes, you can enjoy cat photos and dog pictures aplenty with hashtags like #caturday and #DogsofMastodon. I’ve found Mastodon to be a civil, friendly place that makes it nice to be on social media once again.
Antiracist and social justice posters aplenty
I’m not a member of any marginalized community but I care deeply about social justice and especially Black Lives Matter. Black users of Mastodon share their stories about having been asked to put a content warning on their posts when they discuss politics or racism. But I’m seeing lots of other Mastodon users push back against this and making it clear that content warnings are at the discretion of Mastodon users. The Mastodon community is learning that no white person should be telling a Black person on Mastodon how to speak. I’m also seeing more posts about antiracism, justice, and Black Lives Matter. Follow users like Black Aziz Anansi and Sam Young and search hashtags like #BlackMastodon to get started.
It’s getting easier to find kidlit people like librarians and booksellers
The secret to getting the best out of Mastodon is to create lists and check them. That’s easiest to do if you use your web browser to access Mastodon instead of one of the apps. I do use the Tusky app for Android but my preference is to use Mastodon from the browser. I’ve created and shared a list of more than 300 kidlit people I’m following including librarians, booksellers, teachers and middle grade authors. You can see my lists at this public document I’ve shared.
Let me know if you’d like an invitation to the server I’m on, which is mstdn.social. You can follow me here at https://mstdn.social/@sheilamaverbuch To get started, visit joinmastodon.org and choose a server or leave a comment below if you’d like me to send you an invite to the server mstdn.social. You can also use services like Debirdify and Movetodon, which will connect to your Twitter account, to help you track down folks you already follow on Twitter who have moved to Mastodon.
Main image: Mastodon by Jim Griffin on Flickr