TrickJarrett.com

"Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy"

If it wasn’t already obvious, the last 72 hours have made it crystal clear that it is urgent to build and mainstream alternative, decentralized social media platforms that are resistant to government censorship and control, are not owned by oligarchs and dominated by their algorithms, and in which users own their follower list and can port it elsewhere easily and without restriction.

Relevant to this, I came across this excellent resource for helping people get onto Mastodon and find their community.

I am curious to find someone more knowledgeable than me to dive into the technological implementations of both fediverse and atprotocol infrastructure to understand the longterm prospects for both. My current (ill informed) belief is that fediverse has the better underlying protocol, but Bluesky has the easier onboarding which has given it the short term growth that makes it a more viable longterm option.

Share to: | Tags: social media, mastodon, atprotocol, fediverse, bluesky

TikTok's Wild Ride

The TikTok ride this past 24 hours (with it going offline and then this morning coming back online) seems entirely theatrical and setting Trump up to be seen as the savior. Blah blah blah.

I already want off the ride that the next four years is sure to be.

Share to: | Tags: tiktok, social media, us politics

Most popular feeds on Bluesky

I find this list interesting. Bluesky just recently crossed 28M users, and yet on this list the most popular feed has been liked just 35k times. Custom feeds are one of the marquee features of the platform, and yet it's so minisculely utilized by users.

Share to: | Tags: technology, social media, bluesky

"Like ‘old Twitter’: The scientific community finds a new home on Bluesky"

In July 2023, Adam Kucharski asked his Twitter followers: What platform do you think you will be spending the most time on a year from now? Like many scientists on Twitter, Kucharski, a mathematical modeler of infectious diseases, was increasingly frustrated with changes to the platform since Elon Musk bought it in October 2022. But of the more than 1300 people who responded to his poll, the vast majority expected to keep posting on Twitter, which was renamed X just 2 weeks later. About one-quarter were banking on Threads, Meta's Twitter rival. Only about 7% chose Bluesky.

Now, that has changed, in a big way. Although academics mostly stuck with X in the year after the poll, Bluesky has rapidly emerged as the new online gathering place for researchers, Kucharski among them. They are drawn by its Twitter-like feel, welcoming features, and, increasingly, the critical mass of scientists in many fields who have already made the move. "The majority has spoken, and researchers are moving en masse" to Bluesky, says De-Shaine Murray, a neuroscientist at Yale University who has also migrated to Bluesky.

"It's just gone completely crazy," says Mike Young, a science communicator in Denmark who gives social media workshops to scientists. He and his colleague Lasse Hjorth Madsen did an analysis in August mapping science communities on Bluesky. They found more than 20,000 influential scientists—people on the platform who were followed by at least 30 other scientists in the same network. When they repeated the analysis last week with an increased threshold of 40 scientist followers, the new number of influential scientists was almost 40,000. It is likely to be many times that now, Young says.

Share to: | Tags: science, social media, bluesky

Bluesky Starter Pack Directory

Starter Kits are the best innovation on Bluesky.

Share to: | Tags: social media, bluesky

Mastodon Change

I officially moved from @trick@hachyderm.io to @trick@kind.social as my Mastodon social account. Driven largely because I was feeling hachyderm's community was less relevant to me regularly. So, giving a new instance a try and we'll see how it goes.

Shout out to the kind.social admin, Texan_Reverand for an excellent set of instructions for migrating between instances.

Share to: | Tags: social media, mastodon

OpenVibe on Android

Oh nice! OpenVibe on Android now combines Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads! I've been using it for a while now for BlueSky and Mastodon, and today I opened it to see they added Threads.

Doesn't look like I can view just the Threads timeline, though it is merged into my main feed.

Share to: | Tags: android, social media

Mastodon Platform Analytics

I got curious to see the trends of users on Mastodon and it appears that it grows during certain events on X, but otherwise it is slowly fading. We'll see what it's longterm performance and potential is.

Share to: | Tags: social media, mastodon

Threads API is now public

Saving this here so I can come back to it and integrate posting to Threads into this blog.

Share to: | Tags: programming, php, social media, threads

Did a Reel for work today

For the weekend I'm in Amsterdam for work and today I got on camera and recorded a brief video for it.

Share to: | Tags: magic: the gathering, work, instagram, social media

Testing Threads.net Embeds

The drone dragon is awesome, but also I wanted to see if my code worked for embedding Threads posts on the blog.

Update: Well, that is anticlimactic. It works, but it's pointing you to Threads. What about a post which is not a video?

Yep, that's disappointing.

Share to: | Tags: threads, social media, programming, glowbug

Insight from a meeting with Meta about Threads & the Fediverse

Some interesting insights from a meeting with Meta in December about their plans with Threads and integrating with the Fediverse & Mastodon.

The timeline as outline from the blog entry:

• December 2023 – A user will be able to opt in via the Threads app to have their posts visible to Mastodon clients. People would be able to reply and like those posts using their Mastodon clients, but those replies and likes would not be visible within the Threads application. Threads users would not be able to follow or see posts published across Mastodon servers, or reply to them or like then.

• Early 2024 (Part One) – the Like counts on the Threads app would combine likes from Mastodon and Threads users

• Early 2024 (Part Two) – replies posted on Mastodon servers would be visible in the Threads application

• Late 2024 – A “mixed” Fediverse and Threads experience where you will be able to follow Mastodon users within Threads, and reply to them and like them

• TBD – Full blended interoperability between Threads and Mastodon

Later in the entry, the author does note:

I have to tell you based on my limited knowledge at this point I think this roadmap is probably wildly optimistic. But I guess we’ll see.

I did find the write-up interesting and provided some insights into the plans, though there is still much to be seen for what the platform holds and if it will take more active usage in the future.

Share to: | Tags: social media, meta, threads, fediverse, mastodon

Phanpy.social is my new Mastodon website

No, I didn't change my account, this is the site I'm using to connect to Mastodon. It's not perfect, but I really enjoy the UI and plan to use it moving forward.

Also, I think it's pronounced "fan-pie"? No idea.

Share to: | Tags: mastodon, social media

"The end of Elon Musk" by Drew Magary

Years ago I read Drew Magary's The Postmortal and really enjoyed it for what it asked about the nature of life and death. Here's Drew discussing the pop-death of Elon Musk regarding his recent awful appearance at the NY Times book event:

Musk, who appeared both high and made of plywood, responded with a reality of his own:

"Actually, what this advertising boycott is going to do is, it's going to kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail."

Here Musk looked out to the audience, expecting vehement agreement, perhaps even applause. He was greeted with dead silence instead. Sorkin, still residing in the correct reality, told Musk, "But those advertisers, I imagine they're going to say, 'WE didn't kill the company.'"

And here is where Musk revealed his delusion to all. "Oh yeah?" he shot back. "Tell it to Earth."

Share to: | Tags: elon musk, twitter, social media

Shakespeare's thoughts on social media

I wrote this several years ago and I am still quite proud of it

To Tweet or not to Tweet, that is the question

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to hold

The slings and arrows of your 140 character indignation

Or to take action against a timeline of trolls,

And by opposing enter their onslaught; to delete the post, to send

No more; and by not sending, to say we end

The frustration; the thousand mental shocks

That our brains are heir to? ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To not send; to logoff.

To logoff, perchance to escape; aye, therein lies the rub.

Share to: | Tags: william shakespeare, social media