I've been on Mastodon for a few days now, so it's a bit late for an introduction. But, I wanted to give it a little time to see if I would stick around, and now I think it's been long enough that I can give my impressions as a new Mastodon user. I've never been a social media person - never been on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, none of it. I was, for a time, fairly active on Reddit, but that's a different animal, I think. It reminded me of the days of the BBS, just before the dawn of the internet as we now know it. I interacted with the service mostly through a mobile app, and Reddit effectively killed off all of the third-party alternatives to its own woefully slow and advertising-riddled app. I tried to make do with it, but in the end I quit Reddit, mostly on principle. I missed it, still do sometimes. I tried Mastodon’s Fediverse mate, Lemmy, as a replacement. And, while it superficially resembles Reddit, the depth and breadth of content was just not there.
But, the open-source, decentralized nature of Mastodon made me curious. It promised all of the benefits of the social web, with none of the downsides (or at least far fewer downsides). It promised engagement and discourse with others, like-minded and not. It boasted a modern, efficient user experience and promoted a good selection of third-party apps with which to interact with the service. It had no algorithm that decided what content I was allowed to see, with a purely chronological timeline that I could control, simply by following people and topics that interested me. And then there’s the biggest one of all – it promised that there would be no advertising on the platform. This is largely what kept me away from other forms of social media in the past, and Mastodon’s lack of advertising was what made me try it out.
And, you know what? Mastodon has delivered on all of those promises. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first week or so with it, and I think I will stay. I am @5teverin0@mastodon.social, come by and say 'hi'.
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