Where am I supposed to doomsroll now?
So recently there's been quite an exodus from Twitter (I'm not calling it X) amongst many of the people I follow. Which leaves me with a bit of a conundrum, where am I supposed to spend my time doomscrolling?
A bunch of tech people have remained on Twitter, but the site continues to be full of engagement bait, betting adverts and porn bots.
Despite having zero desire to engage in political discourse online it feels increasingly shoved in my face. As a UK citizen I'm not really interested in what Elon wants me to think about the 'Woke Mind Virus' (whatever the fuck that is) or any other US centric political clownery.
Mastodon 🐘
A bunch of tech people I followed went to Mastodon, I made an account there but the place seems pretty much dead. The majority of posts there seem to centre around how great it is that Mastodon isn't Twitter.
In terms of politics, while Twitter increasingly feels like a right wing echo-chamber, Mastodon isn't exactly a breath of fresh air. It's just the opposite side of the political spectrum voicing their opinions.
Aside from it feeling a bit like a graveyard I do quite like the platform! I just wish I had more people to follow there.
One of my favourite things about Mastodon is they let you use third party applications to browse your feed, something I used to really like about Twitter (before they unceremoniously killed their API). Currently I'm using Tusky on Android and it's fanstasitc.
Bluesky 🦋
After being closed off to signups for the longest time Bluesky seems to be growing in popularity. I made a fresh account there and was immediately blasted by NSFW furry porn in my discover feed (completely unprompted).
That aside things look promising. I hope it continues to take off and the current enthuasism I'm seeing isn't some short lived thing that quickly burns out.
Threads 🧵
I made an account on Threads but the whole site just feels far too sanitised and brand friendly. It's full of cringey corporate accounts interacting with each other and very little real conversation.
I get that Meta doesn't want to be on the hook for fake news or foreign interference in elections, but the current moderation policy (no news) doesn't make it feel like anything is happening on the platform
Twitter was historically always the place (at least for me) for breaking news, which (for me) is what made it so exciting.
Of all the new social media sites, this is the one I happen to use the least.
Conclusion
I'll be keeping my Twitter/X account for the time being as that's where a majority of tech conversation/discourse (at least in my corner of the internet) continues to happen.
I'll probably cross-post whatever I'm currently posting to Twitter to the other sites (not that anyone actually reads my Tweets).
I'm not up to speed with all the activity-pub / federation / decentralised protocols. But from what I understand, is that in some not too distant future I'll be able to see content from Threads/Bluesky on Mastodon (and vice-versa).
Until that happens I'll continue to divide my doomscrolling betweeen various diffferent places.
Feel free to follow me: