Mastodon Migration
Everyone has their own opinion of Twitter, and I’m going to try my best not to comment on, you know, journalists losing their minds, people getting scammed over the blue check mark, or Elon. You know, being Elon.
So I thought it would be a great time to sort of take a look at Mastodon.
I’ve had a Mastodon account, pretty much since the day I ever touched the internet, but I just want to be, you know, let people know about it, okay?
You never heard of Mastodon?
It’s the new rising star to Twitter right now, and there’s a lot of people who are going out to use it, and probably for a lot of people, the first time they’re using it.
And I just want to go over some basic stuff about Mastodon, okay?
You know, here are my walk in the woods, okay?
So first, right, Mastodon is not Twitter, okay?
Mastodon is run by who might as well be random people to you and me, but those random people want to build communities around, like, whatever they want.
It can be about, like, I don’t know, like tech, at least one that I am part of, it’s about Linux, you can do technology.
There’s even just probably one about, like, knitting or something.
And then there’s Twitter, you know, and Twitter is run by Elon, or before Elon, some board or something.
I actually really know nothing about Twitter.
And second, Mastodon and Twitter are both run by algorithms.
Now, instantly, the tech normie hears the word algorithm.
It’s the equivalent of shouting “fire” in a building, and then everyone just freaks out.
But in reality, it’s more simple than you think.
Like, Twitter has a proprietary algorithm that tries to guess what you like, or at least gets you angry, depending on how you think about the most.
At least that’s how it comes off to me.
And Twitter is fundamentally designed around this feature, because that’s what they feel like will get the most engagement out of people.
And we don’t know how it works at all, because it’s proprietary.
And on the other hand, we know exactly how Mastodon works, because it’s open source.
And before anyone tries to issue some counter argument to me, yes, Mastodon has an algorithm.
Yes, it does.
Do you know what it is?
Chronological order.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I prefer to read things as they’re most recent, you know, and not have, you know, the muskiest of men
or Cash App man, tell me how I view my content.
And then, obviously, this is probably the bigger selling point for me, okay?
The third biggest difference is Twitter can ban you for any reason they see fit and hold your data hostage.
“Why would you say that?” You might ask.
You’re not even allowed to request an archive of your data if your account is banned.
That’s terrible.
Did you know that even Facebook lets you request a copy of your data if your account is banned, but Twitter doesn’t.
They’re just like, nope, sorry, bucko, you don’t get your data.
It’s so stupid.
It’s like their governance team is like run like by like underground like hermit crabs or something.
I don’t understand.
But the difference between like Twitter and Mastodon is Mastodon lets you move around and you can interact with other people on other sites.
And I can speak from experience on this one.
And I’m going to, this is probably a question for all of you.
I was originally part of Mastodon.technology, you know, back when it was around. It’s shut down by now.
And Ash Furrow, the admin who had run it for like years and years, by the way, left instructions on how to migrate your account.
And now this isn’t, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any better from Twitter in terms of like data governance because you’re just moving your eggs to a different basket.
Because the administrator and the mods can do whatever the heck they want to you.
And there’s literally nothing you can do about it.
Yeah, if you join someone’s server thing, as weird as that is, they can read all of your personal messages by the way, hope you knew that! There’s lots of problems with Mastodon. It’s garbage, don’t use it.
Luke, Linus Media Group
However, I would like to make the argument that Mastodon is a better basket, because at least if the service shuts down because they’re most of them are community operated, you have recourse so that you can actually do something about it.
And you can take your stuff and move your followers someplace else.
Mastodon Announcement
And this is the big part, okay
I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m doing… To all my Mastodon followers.
I am sincerely sorry because this is a new thing that is happening, okay?
I now have another Mastodon.
Okay.
I’m sorry.
All right.
This is the last time I promise. I hope it isn’t short lived.
But I have another Mastodon instance thing.
But it’s different this time, okay?
I am now part of the VTuber Mastodon instance.
Yes, it is a Mastodon instance that is entirely dedicated to VTubers.
Yes, it is VT.Social and then you can find me at [email protected].
And I will, I don’t know if I, you want, people want me to link my account to it, but I feel like I want to do it, okay?
There are people who are in that community who I would like to be more connected to by just being part of that instance.
And it’s highly unlikely I will be giving up my anime body anytime soon.
So I, please, just let me know in the comments what you think or just, you know, send me a toot or something.
Let me know.
See, they call them toots. It’s so weird,
Twitter Hasn’t Changed
But why am I talking about this now?
Like I’ve avoided talking about Elon buying Twitter.
I don’t really make news videos.
But why, why am I even doing this?
And the really reason why I’m talking about this and regardless of your feelings on Elon or the previous Twitter administration
or how they run right now, whatever. I don’t care.
And I want to say two things, okay?
First off, I already had a very negative opinion of Elon.
And okay, it wasn’t very negative.
It was probably like, I don’t know, like moderately negative? Because like he has this nasty habit to just like say things.
And like he doesn’t like, he just says things, but like he may not actually follow up on any of the stuff that he says.
So it’s like, why should I take like anything he says seriously? I’ll just wait for him to do it.
Like when he does it, I’ll actually like put my money down and say, all right, fine.
Great, I’ll believe you now.
And I will also freely admit, sometimes he’s been right and sometimes I’ve been wrong.
Like I, when he bought Tesla, I was like, wow, that’s such a stupid decision.
But he proved me wrong.
So clearly he, you know, you know, know something, he must know something that I don’t about Tesla.
I mean, maybe he knows something about Twitter that I don’t, I don’t know.
But I don’t do like engineering or how to run an organization the size of Twitter.
I know nothing about that.
But ignoring that, like you also have to consider that like, even if it wasn’t Elon, right, you also would have the problem of like the governance board or whatever that was in charge of Twitter.
With good old Jack and the other guy, whose the name I’m forgetting right now.
The problem with them is they’re basically just doing the exact same thing as Elon.
I don’t think, I think people just forget that, but the governance board and like Jack, we’re doing the exact, and what’s his name, Agrawal, they were all doing the same thing that like Elon is doing right now.
Like, and there are people who are saying, well, Elon is silencing criticism about him.
He’s doing all sorts of good things. He’s doing all sorts of terrible things.
Yeah, but the previous Twitter governance board was the exact same way.
This isn’t any different. It’s all the same.
It’s like, even though it’s like, you know, Twitter’s changed hands, they fired half their staff.
It doesn’t matter.
Like at the end of the day, Twitter still feels the same to me, except the only difference is now Elon’s tweets because, and it’s hilarious because Twitter doesn’t, I don’t follow anyone on Twitter.
They put his tweets at the very top. I don’t know why.
It’s like, are they telling, are they trying to like social signal me to like pay attention to the CEO?
It’s like clearly biased towards him.
So it’s like, I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.
And then it’s like, like, at least like when, you know, when Jack was in charge, they didn’t push his tweets to the top.
But, you know, they would just like silently like ban everybody, you know, like Twitter usually does.
Twitter Hates Your Privacy & Security
But why am I even bringing this up? Like the whole governance thing about Twitter?
Why am I bringing this up?
Because I have been banned from Twitter before.
Like I mentioned this in a video, you can go back and look.
It’s all video like really early in channel history.
I mentioned it on a YouTube live stream, but Twitter banned me once.
But not because I said anything like saucy.
I didn’t say any gamer words or show any like controversial hot takes.
So what happened? Well, it was because, wait for it,
I didn’t give them my phone number.
At least according to their records, I didn’t give them my phone number because I gave them my phone number when I registered my account because you’re supposed to give your phone number when you register an account.
Because remember guys, back in the day, Twitter used to be for your phone.
We originally started with 140 characters that we could fit in one text message, which is what the whole service was based on.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Answers Twitter Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED
For security purposes, of course, this is why Twitter is even more messed up.
You have to do this convoluted thing where you add your phone number because I registered my phone number.
And then in order, you register your two factor authentication.
So you register a security key or Google Authenticator and then you remove your phone number.
So Twitter can’t like, you know, like use your phone for two factor authentication for like selling you ads or whatever.
Because yes, we know they have done that before.
But also we know from other data breaches that people got a hold of people’s phone numbers because of data breaches.
So if you remove it from their system, there’s a chance it might not show up in the next data breach.
Because how big of a target Twitter is, we know it’s going to happen.
It’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when a service gets data breached.
So you have to be prepared.
And the funniest part is that proved to me that Twitter didn’t have my phone number.
But what was the result? They banned me.
And then they bring me like, write up a thing basically saying how sorry I was and saying like, please reinstate my account!
I am such a poor citizen! Give me my account back, Mr. Jack!
And then what happened was surprisingly enough, they didn’t make me go through the appeal process.
You know why? They just presented me this big box saying, give us your phone number.
And it’s like, Twitter, this is ridiculous.
It’s like, I can’t, I gave you, all right, I’m not going to go through this again.
No offense to my Twitter audience.
Like there’s like roughly about 40 of you guys, I like you guys, okay.
But I’ll be honest, all right.
And like the conversations that I have had on Twitter never go very far beyond like a few hearts and a few retweets.
And then everyone just moves on with their day or just keeps scrolling past me.
And that’s me included when I read stuff on Twitter.
You’re like, what, you read stuff on Twitter, you have like zero followers.
Yeah, because I know Twitter is going to sell my information to advertisers.
So I don’t follow anybody.
No offense to anybody, but I don’t follow anybody because I know whether it’s Elon, Jack, [Parag] Agrawal, whoever is in charge of Twitter.
They’re going to sell your information and I want no part of that.
And you say, well, well, you signed up for YouTube.
Yeah, but at least YouTube pays me money.
Twitter don’t pay me money.
It’s like, no, you’re even going as far to say you’re going to pay us $8 to edit your tweets or like get a checkmark.
It’s like, that’s crazy.
I also know in defense of Elon, you know, first off, Twitter was already like a dying dumpster fire when he got it.
And then second of all, like he’s probably playing cleanup with all of the garbage that’s going on on Twitter.
And then third and probably the one that I think people like overlook the most is there’s all of this like like legacy stuff because Twitter has just been around for so long.
And like he’s had to help people let go of it.
But then there’s also the component of, yeah, but he’s also just clearly abusing his power.
So it’s like, yeah, but also Jack was kind of abusing his power.
So basically, nothing has changed with Twitter.
Nothing has changed.
It’s just the same same old crap as usual compared to Mastodon, where I’ve had great conversations of people.
I’ve even like, I’m, thank you for the person who sent me the ebooks about like how to use git by the way.
I still don’t know how to use git properly.
More use that’s more useful than anything I ever got out of Twitter.
Okay. The only useful thing I ever got out of Twitter was a Huffington Post article.
I don’t like the Huffington Post! Come on!
And it’s not even in English! It’s in French!
No offense to the French or Canadians or the Africans, whatever.
I’m sorry! All that being said:
If you really want to stay in touch with me, you can just feel free to use whatever.
But understand I have a very negative opinion of Elon.
I’m very negative opinion of Twitter.
And Twitter has screwed me over in the past.
And I’m not inclined to deal with the, the sicko who runs them, whether that’s Elon, Jack or someone else, their proprietary algorithm, them not letting you export your data,
and having that up there literally forever to be archived forever for all people to see forever.
And it’s, I cannot.
And oh, and they sell it to advertisers too.
I can’t, I can’t stand it.
And clearly if it goes under, I will not shed a tear.
I’ll shed all my crocodile tears and I’ll move on with my life.
And I feel like many people are the same way.
I mean, like I’m, you know, I’m slightly more positive to it because I actually have to use it.
And I actually try to get some value out of it, but not really much value out of it.
Okay, that’s it for today.