May 4, 2022•320 words
Ahh this is quite a late reaction but if anyone is interested in a Twitter alternative given the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter, I'd recommend Mastodon. TBH, I haven't looked at a whole lot of Twitter alternatives, but Mastodon seems quite solid. I also have signed up if that'll encourage anyone else to join as well. Here is my profile: https://scholar.social/@vincenttran
mastodon.green seems quite good given their climate-friendly orientation, but scholar.social also seems quite interesting. I've requested an account there, ig I'll update on if I can join and whether I'll move the above account to that one. I've read both of their TOS's/privacy policies, and they both seem relatively ok. They weren't extremely long, which is a nice change from the normal corporate stuff. I think scholar.social has a better privacy policy though.
Also, I still think that social media is quite bad, but Mastodon fixes some of the problems like privacy and software freedom. However, it still isn't perfect. There is still the problem of AI (which I am not sure if it is at play in Mastodon), echo cambers from like on posts, media permanence, and the addictive nature of it. I might try and make some social media that addresses all the problems I see with it. Maybe I'll call is social us-dia of antisocial media or something like that. Despite the flaws, I thought it would be good to try and leverage the network effect to support the better alternate of Mastodon, especially considering the heat Twitter has been getting. I am not too sure what I'd post there. Maybe I'll just post the personal updates there instead of here. But if I do that, I'd be making a philosophy post everyday. I think that'd be too hard lol. I saw that scholar.social doesn't allow reposting of content from other sites, so I can't just repost the posts here if I switch to that host.