I keep thinking about these tweets from Derek Powazek:
I’m not really watching Twitter these days, but haven’t gone so far as to delete my tweets. Since I mostly read (past tense) on Tweetbot and that’s going away, I have a bit more space between me and Twitter. Just in time too, because today is the day to stop reading twttr.
Mastodon is interesting. I am on a server at @georgeh@mastodon.social (3 toots this year!) but there are other Mastodon instances that kind of mean something. You can be on photog.social for a photo-specific feed, or mhz.social for ham radio. There are more.
I have different Slacks for different contexts. Slack for work, sure. My coworking Slack doubles as a local online community. That’s where I would ask for a plumber or electrician. I have a few Slack with friends and a few more. I’d probably be on some Discords too if I could ever figure out how their UI distinguishes between text and voice.
I’m reading more blogs too. My RSS reader isn’t a Skinner box, trying to mete out dopamine hits. It’s just a list of posts, in reverse chronological order. Like with Twitter, I’m focusing on people I know or would like to know, and who don’t post a million times a day.
A million years ago, I ran an Ann Arbor blog aggregator called ArborBlogs. It was basically a Planet site, showing all the posts from a curated list of blogs. Curation seems to be the key, and curation doesn’t scale. Is that a bug or a feature?
Maybe the way forward, away from toxic interactions and anonymous trolls, isn’t the public timeline but the small groups. Facebook’s need to connect everyone to everyone continues to be its cruel mission, but its groups are the thing that keeps people from leaving.
I’ve never been someone who looks at hashtags or trending topics on Twitter. Someone looks at that stuff, right? That’s the kind of thing that needs a giant public timeline, algorithmically pruned, collapsing all contexts. I’m looking for good stuff from people I know or would like to know. Introverts of the world: unite!