Starting in 2022, with the direction Twitter was going, I moved to Mastodon.
I knew what I was leaving. Twitter had been part of my life for the previous 12 years. I invested way too much of my time on the platform but at the same time, this is where I connected with people in Japan in 2011 when the tsunami hit (way before even considering visiting Japan, let alone living there), the place where I found sanity during my time in China and meeting a lot of people.
So this was what I was leaving behind. 12 years of socialisation, of community.
But also a great place where people shared articles, insights and so on. And, because I had been using Tweetbot since 2012, powerful filters to avoid being spammed by the drama-du-jour or the latest pump-and-dump tech scheme.
Mastodon
I loved Mastodon.
Quieter but not exempt of drama. Passionate people. Strong communities, with their own quirks, drama, sometimes living in their own estate (aka Mastodon servers) with their own rules.
Yet, Japanese users barely moved there. Which means, things happening in Japan barely register on the timeline.
More greedy or opportunistic person would see this as the opportunity to become THE Japan account, stealing content from here and there, applying the same tactics a lot of the popular accounts on Twitter used and are still using now. I’m too old for this shit and always despised these guys.
A word on Bluesky
I don’t like it.
Don’t like the feel of it. Feels a lot like the worst practices of Twitter. On a new platform. Spamming good words trying to get noticed, rage-baiting etc…
Looks like (and was regularly told) I was batshit stupid given how everyone seems to have moved there.
Content discovery
Anyway, platforms are not the topic of this impromptu resurrection post. Content discovery is.
Because no matter the platform you use, how do you get the information you look for ? On Twitter, finding the right accounts was the way. Same for Mastodon or Bluesky.
You are on the receiving end. And at the mercy of the algorithm, or lack thereof, or defederation or…
What’s old is new again, RSS etc
The crowd on Mastodon, on the whole, is pretty tech-savvy and has strong opinion on tech stuff.
And RSS is one of these stuff.
The Mastodon software itself, in addition to supporting its version of the ActivityPub protocol also publishes a RSS feed of each user.
Bloggers on the platform advocates for RSS, requesting websites to activate their feed and advertising it the same way they do social network platforms.
Then again, what I found more interesting was seeing Web 1.0 or 2.0 practices coming back. People sharing accounts they liked during #FollowFriday. WebRings and “Sites we like” pages coming back to some blogs. Weekly Notes where people shared what they did during the week, what they read and what they liked. On their blogs. Or sites.
Posting
That last point… is related to something I was considering for quite some time. This blog, as well as my main one, the one I review books or my pet project, have been dormant for long.
It had become an habit to just post a quick message, or a short thread when hitting the character limit, press send and forget about it (or refresh the notification page for the metrics-obsessed ones). But no trace remain. Gone with the feed.
I am guilty of that. While at the same time nagging content-creators friends to have their own websites and publish there. At least, link to their content. Keep trace. Keep control.
I mean, this post could have been a tweet/toot “I can’t believe I waited so long to install FreshRSS”. Because that’s what triggered this stream of consciousness which is already way too long.
Final word
So yeah, I installed FreshRSS. Deleted Feedly which I found barely usable, no matter how long I tried using it.
I still need to find sources I enjoy. But I am committed and have the tools I need. And people are using old tactics which make it easier.
And I need to do the same.