If, like me, you don't intend to be posting to twitter any time soon, and it is conceivable to you that it might cease to exist in the not too distant future, you might want to download your twitter archive. You can get it from Settings -> Your account -> Download an archive of your data.

It took half a day or so for the download to be ready. Of course if things do start going downhill rapidly there that time horizon could increase.

Expect some of the following to happen in the coming weeks:

- celebrities with huge follower counts pushing tiny community-run servers to their knees

- instance admin burnout; shutting down of servers

- big new servers that don't "vibe" with common rules or culture being widely defederated

- some notable account violating an instance code of conduct and throwing a fit

- lots of people ragequitting Mastodon for one reason or another

- etc.

It'll be a rough ride. Patience and strength, all.

The collapse of Twitter is a system breakdown. Mastodon and the fediverse represent something different: _system change_. From for-profit "Big Tech" to nonprofit, open source, community-owned public spaces.

System change is always harder than you think. It always incurs short-term costs, with hoped for long-term benefits.

The next few weeks will be really tough for the fediverse. Stick around, vibe with it, and you just might help us put a huge part of the web back in community hands. <3

This explainer is just so well written

@Chri_x We shall not mention this place 🤫

Just reiterating … Mastodon isn’t a “Twitter competitor” in the sense of a rival company making a rival product.
It’s a community that decided to make an alternative together, and you are invited to take part.

Here’s an idea: let’s call people “people” on the fediverse instead of “users” whenever we can.

Compare:

“There are 42 users on this instance.”

vs

“There are 42 people on this instance.”

Which acknowledges our humanity more?

Language matters. We don’t need to perpetuate mainstream technology’s othering/colonial framing of “us” – designers/developers/other “clever folks” – and “them” – the users (usually one step removed from “dumb user” and usually the ones who get used).

#peopleNotUsers

I don't like wading into Meta Discourse but since it is clogging my TL right now: if you want people to spread out better over the Fediverse etc etc, tooting that people shouldn't join Masto dot social is not very useful in isolation. Tell people where you think people SHOULD go instead, and not just "a smaller instance", share specific recommendations of "if you're interested in X, go to Y.Z" that will help people point their friends in the right direction!

i don't actually think there'll be any mass exodus fram twitter or that musk will substantially change anything in the short term, i just think mastodon is neat & held back only by the lack of users

@cgranade @christianp I made a twitter account a year ago when I started my channel. I gained 1 follower. Twitter is for famous people who post their stream of consciousness thoughts and lurkers who read them. No, that's unkind. There is a lot of interesting and useful stuff posted, but no engagement with the masses, it is much more a spectator sport. Here at mathstodon I joined, asked a question about string theory and some expert immediately donated time to answer. I am amazed.

After just a week on #Mastodon I feel like I already had more interesting and meaningful interactions than I ever did on the other site. Maybe there's some excitement of meeting folks in a new platform, but maybe it's also that tweets don't get buried by some stupid algorithm here... 🤓

Ich finde es ja lustig, wie einige Twitter-User Stimmung gegen #Mastodon machen. Dann kommen Argumente wie: "Die privaten Nachrichten (DMs) können von Admins mitgelesen werden!11!!1".

1. Das ist auf Twitter nicht anders.
2. Für sensible Kommunikation nutze ich Software, die Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung (E2E) beherrscht.
3. Erst denken, dann schreiben.

#neuhier #twitter #bullshit

@plvlc 🙋

I've had a good idea: a chalk drawing of a mastodon, surrounded by mathsy stuff. I've had a go at that on my little tablet, and cropped it down to each of the required sizes.
I'm happy with the general idea, but if anyone can execute it better I'll gladly take submissions.

@recommend_games #RecommendGames for Stella19

I can no longer take seriously all the left-wing political people who remain there after the announced Twitter mass layoffs.

Alle linkspolitischen Menschen, die nach den angekündigten Massenentlassungen bei Twitter noch dort bleiben, kann ich nicht mehr ernst nehmen.

#twitter #massenentlassungen #layoffs #boycottTwitter #twitterMigration

Ich will eigentlich nur dass alle Mastodon nutzen damit ein Nachrichten-Sprecher eines Tages "Der Kanzler äußerte sich dazu per Tröt" sagen muss

@MarkusRShepherd just joined here, looking for fellow #boardgame players as well! 😁

@jens Good point, I should check for more accounts to follow there 😎

It looks like there's an awesome 🇩🇪 speaking #Brettspiel community forming here. 😎 But where are the international folks? 😇

#BoardGames #Brettspiele