As more people are abandoning X, again, perhaps my short introduction to Mastodon might be of use, if you'd like to share it with your friends?
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@stefan I have signed up for more than one account on the "fediverse" but routinely get messages at the bottom of a reply stream telling me there are other replies I could see if I followed them...I click the link and then have to become a member of that server too...please explain how this is a fediverse?
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@loran_hayden Right, so this is a technical limitation of the fediverse.
If you're interested, I wrote a bit about this on my blog, with a few links to browser plugins that can help with this, while the Mastodon team is looking into a permanent fix to this problem:
Lessons learned from running a single-person Mastodon instance | Stefan Bohacek
It's not for everyone, but worth a try!
(stefanbohacek.com)
Hope this helps!
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@stefan thanks, but you're not explaining. Why am I even seeing these messages since I am a member of the fediverse and my posts should be seen by everyone everywhere in said fediverse?
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@stefan I just keep hearing about this "fediverse" and I don't feel like I'm part of it.
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@loran_hayden Right, so I mention in the article that your home server may not show you posts or full profiles of people it doesn't know about. I know this is a problem with Mastodon, not sure how much this is an issue on other fediverse platforms.
But you are absolutely right, this does seem to defeat the purpose of how the fediverse should work.
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@loran_hayden I think it would be more accurate to say that yes, you can see anyone's post, but sometimes it requires a bit of work to interact with them. Luckily, some of the browser plugins I mentioned in the same article help with this, until Mastodon starts to handle this better.
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@loran_hayden Ah, well let me tell you, this is even worse if you're on a smaller server, like myself.
The biggest problem we have in the fediverse is that everything is either crowd-funded, or a labor of love.
We don't have millions of dollars in funding, so missing features take a bit longer to arrive.
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@loran_hayden And that's why Mastodon is a bit rough around the edges, and things are not as user-friendly as they should be. Yet!
I appreciate you giving this a try though, and hope your experience gets better!
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@stefan Thanks for your replies. I hope you understand the reason I am frustrated.
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@loran_hayden Oh absolutely, trust me. I have been pretty vocal about many of the fediverse's problems, both technical, and also cultural.
There are times when it feels like the fediverse is really not living up to its potential.
Still, I am very grateful to everyone not giving up on it, and sticking around to help build better, healthier communities.
And improvements are definitely being made! It's just...a really slow process.
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@stefan Thank you!
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@ybor312 My pleasure!
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@stefan @AltTextHealthCheck Ha! I was going through the accounts that https://followgraph.vercel.app/ recommended and did a search for @ftrain to see what sorts of things he posted... and got distracted by some other shiny thing before I could look through them. Later I found the open page and followed him based on this awesome post https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/111075838527412348 which I realized later was a post by @urlyman that just happened to show up in the search results that I had not actually followed to Paul's site
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@stefan @AltTextHealthCheck @ftrain @urlyman luckily it turns out that Paul posts some cool stuff too
. So, now I follow both 
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Henry D. Rinehartreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan joining Mastodon was almost ridiculously easy, and it's delightfully calm here.
I'm the only one I've seen shouting so far, it's delightful.
I was hoping Bluesky would be a respite from X. but I have to find out more about who's running it.
Thanks, Mastodon, I appreciate this site, and I'll try not to break anyone who doesn't deserve it.
Every generation gets the call to defend the Light from the Darkness.
It's our turn.
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Henry D. Rinehart last edited by
@hdrinehart Hi Henry!
Nice, really glad your initial experience has been so positive!
I see you're responding to my post, has this article by any chance been of any help with getting set up on here?
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@hdrinehart As for who's running Bluesky, well, here's a very interesting thread that popped up earlier today.
Dave Troy :toad: (@[email protected])
1/IMPORTANT thread about Bluesky funding and origins. Many folks know that it was seeded by Jack Dorsey around a libertarian vision of a magical network that wouldn’t need moderation because it would be decentralized and baked into a protocol (somehow). The people who aided Dorsey in pursuing this vision were other libertarian/post-rationalists connected with effective altruism and other online anarchist movements.
toad.social (toad.social)
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Henry D. Rinehartreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan yes, those posts are the reason I was going to dig a little deeper myself.
The internet is a wonderful thing. . .
Every generation gets the call to defend the Light from the Darkness.
It's our turn.
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Henry D. Rinehartreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan honestly, no, but it's nice you're doing what you can to help others.
Matthew 25, verses 31 through 46 says you're going to heaven, brother, congratulations.
If that matters to you. Read it, it's a hoot, I love showing it to 'Christians' and watching as they realize where they're heading. . .
Every generation gets the call to defend the Light from the Darkness, Stefan.
It's our turn.
