Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Mastodon”
setting up an iOS image posting POSSE workflow for Hugo
- kudos:Several days ago, I posted that: One of the biggest gaps in my current website-first approach to social media is an inability to snap a picture and quickly post it. I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, but an upcoming cool vacation has me thinking I should really go for it. A couple of days later, I realized I wasn’t alone in this when Alex Sirac picked up the post on their website, and it got another sympathetic comment there, too.
- kudos:
It’s been messy, but pretty sure I’ve finally figured out how to post images to my website (and from there to social media) from my phone.
- kudos:
One of the biggest gaps in my current website-first approach to social media is an inability to snap a picture and quickly post it. I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, but an upcoming cool vacation has me thinking I should really go for it.
some thoughts on joining Bluesky, maintaining platform independence, and tweaking Mastodon
- kudos:It’s now been over two years since I ditched Twitter, and I recently made the decision to go ahead and outright delete the account rather than leave it there to ward off imposters. It’s been really interesting to explore the new landscape of social media during this time, and I wanted to put together a post with some of my current thoughts. I’m on Bluesky now, I guess? First, I set up a Bluesky account a number of weeks ago, and I’ve been following other Bluesky accounts for a while (first via RSS, now via the Reeder app alongside RSS), but I’ve finally started actually using it since the election, which seems to be sparking some new interest in ditching Twitter.
- kudos:
Il y a beaucoup plus de photos de train sur mes fils Mastodon et Bluesky qu’il y en avait sur mon fil Twitter, et ça donne de la joie.
- kudos:
Despite all the Bad Stuff happening right now, what my brain has chosen to get anxious about this morning is how I have my RSS + Micro.blog + Mastodon + Bluesky reader set up.
on art and punching Nazis
- kudos:A brief, entirely-unrelated-to-this-post conversation on Mastodon this afternoon got me thinking about an art exhibit that I saw in college and still think about every once in a while. The exhibit was on something along the lines of pop culture and politics, and one of the only two things that I remember from the exhibit (the other being D&D character sheets for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney) was a statue depicting an action figure-y Captain America brandishing the severed head of Saddam Hussein.
- kudos:
The Mastodon bot that posts random Homestar Runner screenshots is back, and I’m so happy. Refusing to unfollow it despite it not having posted since July was a wise choice.
wanting to play Keyforge
- kudos:I’ve recently followed a couple of bots on Mastodon that promise to show “Random Magic: The Gathering Cards” or “Every Pokémon Card.” Following both of these reminds me how much I like trying to think through how the unique abilities of different cards (or miniatures, or whatever else) can be combined to win a game. The last time that I’ve really scratched that itch was when I was in grad school and got really into the X-Wing Miniatures Game.
- kudos:
With Mozilla exiting the fediverse, I guess it’s time to really think about either hosting a personal server or seeing if I can make my Hugo site play nice with ActivityPub…
the new Reeder is exactly the app I want right now
- kudos:introduction and history I’ve experimented for a while with consuming a range of media through an RSS reader. I don’t remember how long I subscribed to Feedbin, but being able to follow both Twitter accounts and email newsletters in the same app as my RSS subscriptions was a real game-changer. Eventually, I jumped ship for NetNewsWire—I don’t remember all the reasons behind the switch, but knowing that I could keep subscribing to Twitter and start following some subreddits was definitely a major factor.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'What’s the Difference Between Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads?'
- kudos:This is a helpful EFF overview that I’m posting to bookmark for later. link to “What’s the Difference Between Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads?”
- kudos:
My current RSS reader (feeeed for iOS) boasts Fediverse integration. I always figured it was just through grabbing accounts’ RSS feeds, and you can do that, but it turns out if you subscribe to it as a Fediverse account, it works as a quasi-client, with additional data pulled in. Neat!
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My brother misheard “fediverse” as “feta-verse” on a podcast, and I’m now soliciting your best cheese puns for Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc.
setting up POSSE-style microblogging with a Hugo static site and Micro.blog
- kudos:I was recently talking to some friends about how I’ve been working to make my Hugo blog the center of my online presence. In particular, even though I didn’t know the term at first, I’ve been trying since 2019 to follow the POSSE strategy of “Publish (to) Own Site, Send Elsewhere” (note that, in the grand tradition of many tech acronyms, everyone agrees what the acronym means, but there are multiple ways of understanding what it stands for exactly).
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The ‘queer.af’ Mastodon instance disappeared because of the Taliban'
- kudos:Domain name infrastructure plays a bigger role than we might think. link to “The ‘queer.af’ Mastodon instance disappeared because of the Taliban”
- kudos:
I like that there’s a They Might Be Giants lyrics bot to follow on Mastodon, but I’m dealing with a lot more TMBG songs stuck in my head these days.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, part 2 – Platypus'
- kudos:Strong follow up to the last post I just linked to. link to “Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, part 2 – Platypus”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, part 1 – Platypus'
- kudos:Lots of helpful thoughts in this post. Makes me think about the value of Mastodon for the academy—and other spaces that I care about. Also, I love seeing Doctorow and academic thinking come together. link to “Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, part 1 – Platypus”
pre-conference updates to my online presence
- kudos:This week, I’m attending two different research conferences (well, I only barely attended the first one, to be honest). The leadup to these conferences has involved some changes to my web presence, just in case people actually check my website when I put it on my slides. Overall, I’m happy with the changes that I’ve made, so I thought I’d take advantage of my free Delta in-flight wi-fi to blog about some of the changes I’ve made and why.
- kudos:
I’ve tried to scale back my media consumption recently. My RSS client feels empty, and it’s weird not to check social media as much. Every time I think about stepping it back up, though, it just stresses me out.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is ‘Slumping,’ Despite Massive Increase In Usage | Techdirt'
- kudos:I’d seen some of the headlines Masnick is critiquing here, but I hadn’t read the articles. I appreciate this critique and overview. link to ‘Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is ‘Slumping,’ Despite Massive Increase In Usage | Techdirt’
three grumpy observations from a Twitter researcher on requests for 'quote toots'
- kudos:Over the past several weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of conversations about Mastodon’s lack of a feature equivalent to Twitter’s “quote tweets.” To be honest, I don’t really care about the lack of a “quote toot” feature, and I’ve done my best to steer clear of these conversations (though I did note while writing this post that it caught the eye of Mastodon’s founder in a big way). I gather that these conversations been around for a while, but I get the sense from my own feeds that there’s been a notable recent uptick.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter rival Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status | Ars Technica'
- kudos:Mastodon isn’t perfect, but this strikes me as a good sign. link to ‘Twitter rival Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status | Ars Technica’
quitting scrolling, not just Twitter
- kudos:Although it’s been a real delight to see so many people joining Mastodon over the past few weeks, I’ve found that there’s also a disadvantage that I hadn’t expected: I’m spending a lot more time scrolling through Mastodon these days than I ever have since setting up my Mastodon accounts. When I began setting up Mastodon accounts and shifting away from Twitter back in April, I felt like I had made a big leap forward in terms of my online consumption.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors - The Verge'
- kudos:Just when you thought this couldn’t get any worse. Will be really interested to see if Dorsey gets banned. link to ‘Twitter abruptly bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon, and other competitors - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Mastodon users embrace columnist's funny error about a fictitious John Mastodon | Boing Boing'
- kudos:This has been one of the most delightful moments I’ve experienced in my relatively short time on Mastodon. This week has been a good one for Mastodon: Musk’s continued missteps have brought more people, and a meme like this one helps give the fediverse more of a shared culture. link to ‘Mastodon users embrace columnist’s funny error about a fictitious “John Mastodon” | Boing Boing’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter is blocking links to Mastodon - The Verge'
- kudos:I’ve been trying to avoid dire predictions for Twitter since Musk took over, but this seems more and more like a turning point in the identity and reputation of the platform. link to ‘Twitter is blocking links to Mastodon - The Verge’
- kudos:
The fediverse is great and all, but for me, it won’t be complete until there’s a Mormon instance of Mastodon at curelom.social.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Citizens' social media can provide an antidote to propaganda and disinformation'
- kudos:I fall victim to this despite being a Mastodon fan. Appreciate the reminder to be more careful with language. link to ‘Citizens’ social media can provide an antidote to propaganda and disinformation’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Welcome to Smalltown, a Civic Space Online - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure'
- kudos:This looks great! link to ‘Welcome to Smalltown, a Civic Space Online - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure’
some thoughts on Gab pushback against research on Gab
- kudos:I’m not going to link to it, but I am fascinated by a recent post on the Gab blog where Andrew Torba announced some new features to help Gab users push back against research on the platform. Not only do I have two or three ongoing projects using Gab data (one is in the very, very early stages and—ironically—uses Gab blog posts), but some of what Torba wrote also aligned with some of the (fortunately mild) trolling my co-author, Amy Chapman, and I have experienced because of my work on the far-right-influenced DezNat hashtag in Mormon Twitter.
some Hypothesis (and other) updates for the blog
- kudos:Shortly after last week’s mostly-successful experiment with Hypothesis, I noticed Chris Aldrich posting to Micro.blog about the software and started up a conversation. I’d followed Chris a few weeks before in trying to get more into Micro.blog (perhaps my favorite indie social media platform out there, though I’m also enjoying getting into Mastodon) by following academia and academia-adjacent folks, and was pleased to see an area of common interest. It wasn’t until a separate conversation on Mastodon this morning that I remembered that my Hypothesis setup was dependent on my manually checking annotations on my website.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk Threatens to End Twitter Deal Without Information on Spam Accounts - The New York Times'
- kudos:What a mess. Glad to be pivoting toward my blog and Mastodon. link to ‘Elon Musk Threatens to End Twitter Deal Without Information on Spam Accounts - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why we need a public internet and how to get one - The Verge'
- kudos:Lots of interesting ideas in this interview. I particularly like libraries running Mastodon instances. link to ‘Why we need a public internet and how to get one - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '30,000 New Users Signed Up for Mastodon After Elon Musk Bought Twitter'
- kudos:Is this just mastodon.social? Seems like it, but that’s not the only instance getting a bump, and sloppy reporting to ignore how federated instances work—that’s one of the reasons we’re all moving there. link to ‘30,000 New Users Signed Up for Mastodon After Elon Musk Bought Twitter’