If you're not familiar with Mastodon

I've always really liked Mastodon as a concept. It's everything people say they want Twitter to be: It's open source, so anyone can host a Mastodon instance. It's federated, so you can follow and interact with people across different Mastodon instance hosts. Every client I've seen so far as been chronological by default. It doesn't come with it's own Weirdo Amplification Algorithm. And, as you would expect, it's nonprofit and doesn't have ads.

There's really only one major problem with it in my opinion, and unfortunately it's self-perpetuating--there aren't as many people to follow on Mastodon, so Mastodon isn't as fun as Twitter, so people leave Mastodon for Twitter, so there aren't as many people to follow on Mastodon.

So why join Mastodon now?

There's a lot of speculation right now about the future of The Bird Site, and I've been pleased to see some of my Twitter favorites create Mastodon accounts "just in case." This makes me happy because I'd rather follow people on Mastodon than Twitter already.

So I'm hoping to keep the trend going. I've created my own separate Mastodon account for tech content for my usual fare: civic tech, functional programming, web platform, etc.

How about you?

You can find a mastodon instance on JoinMastodon.org.

Then, drop your link in the thread below and let us know what you like to post about. (For my part, I'm particularly hoping to find my fellow functional programming fam, which is why I'm abusing the tag above.)

Anyone who takes this article as a cue to give me their hot takes on Elon Musk has to drop and give me twenty. I will block you before I finish reading your comment.