Like many watching from the sidelines of Twitter’s rapid implosion, I’ve finally migrated to Mastodon. You can find me at @michelle@front-end.social.
The reasons for leaving Twitter behind are many, and (hopefully) obvious. Twitter was never without its problems, but the consequences of it being run by an actual psychopath are already being felt. I was reluctant to have yet another social network to manage, but witnessing the mass exodus from Twitter of so many of the people I care about hearing from has led to my feed no longer feeling like the place it once was, as those voices gradually disappear. I guess I’ll still post on Twitter, for now, albeit less often. It’s a bit of a shame to leave behind the following that I’ve built up over the years of posting on this blog, but it’s not like my livelihood depends on it. For others I imagine it might be a different story.
Mastodon isn’t an out-and-out replacement, and I’m not sure it’ll ever be. Perhaps one of the consequences of this is we’ll curate our own, smaller communities in many different places rather than one, and perhaps that’s a good thing. I appreciate what Mastodon is doing, but all the language around “servers” and “instances” seems like it will inevitably alienate the less tech-savvy, and those people will go elsewhere. What I liked about my Twitter feed was seeing the mix of tech, design, politics, activism, climate journalism, niche art and web comics all in one place. Even my dad was on there. Over on Mastodon those things all feel more separate and less discoverable (or absent altogether), even though you can, I gather, follow people from different servers (I’m still learning). But perhaps that’s a good thing too, and starting afresh will mean my feed is more carefully curated. I won’t miss the ads either.
Over on Twitter I had a separate account for CSS stuff, but being on the front end server that seems less necessary right now (also, more admin). On the other hand, is it weird if I post non-front end things on the front end server? I don’t know. I’m still learning. For now, find me on here, or find me on Mastodon, or maybe find me on Twitter too. It already feels like a great front end community is building over on Mastodon, so come join us 🥰
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