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1/2 I have deactivated my account on Twitter (X), which began in 2007. Under Elon Musk, Twitter has not only decided to stop blocking bigots and liars and pro-insurrectionists, it has actively welcomed them, with apparent support from Mr. Musk.

@waltmossberg This speaks volumes, Walt. X is indeed a cesspool and your leadership here will have a big impact.

This is an existential moment for the web and the concept of open standards like #ActivityPub

Thankfully @Gargron has labored for years to create a viable approach that could form the foundation for an open social web. And many here are working to make the user experience simpler and more approachable for mainstream users.

Your presence on @Mastodon is incredibly important now.

@mike @Gargron @Mastodon Thanks, Mike. I’ve been on Mastodon quite awhile, as you know. But I rarely used it, because (a) it can be confounding to use (yes, I can figure it all out, but you know I favor things average folks can grok quickly) and (b) content moderation matters hugely to me and I need to know what the policies are for multiple servers and who is responsible….

@mike @Gargron @Mastodon …here’s an example of the complexity here: I just tried to react to a post about my leaving Twitter, and was met with a big notice saying I couldn’t do that because I wasn’t logged into the server where it lived. I thought all the posts and replies were interchangeable among servers.

@waltmossberg @mike @Mastodon I appreciate the feedback. The notice doesn't say you can't, it tells you how to do it. That notice has been reworked in the latest beta, as visible on mastodon.social—curious to know if you'd consider that an improvement.

@Gargron @mike @Mastodon I’ll let you know what I think when I see it. I don’t use betas. But, just by your description, it sounds like a chore. Please understand I’m not denigrating all your hard work here, but after 27 years of reviewing tech products for average people, I react poorly to requiring instructions for simple tasks. Are conversations and reactions here between people on different servers interchangeable or not?

@waltmossberg @mike @Mastodon Yes. Your account is on mastodon.world. You are conversing with me, whose account is on mastodon.social, and Mike, whose is on flipboard.social. Totally separate infrastructure, but your post just pops up in my notifications.

@Gargron @mike @Mastodon So then why did I get that big ugly notice before? I can’t recall to whom I was trying to respond or what server they were on. As you can imagine, I’m getting a lot of traffic from people I don’t know or follow because of my decision to ditch Twitter. I assume I can easily respond to any of them.

Eugen Rochko

@waltmossberg @mike @Mastodon Presumably you opened a post on its original website, which was not the same website where your account is. That website has no idea who you are. The notice gives you a pointer how to open the same post in your own website where you are logged in. You can navigate to mastodon.social and try interacting with any post to see what the new notice looks like.

@waltmossberg @Gargron That message instructs you to copy the URL into the search field on the server you are logged into (copy button provided). This will bring up the post on your server. Now you can interact with that post to your heart's content (reply, boost, favorite).

Follow that account if you wish to interact with that user in the future without taking those steps.

A few extra steps, but once you are comfortable with how the distributed service works, it's easy-peasy.

@digginjazz @waltmossberg @Gargron even after you get used to it, it is not as easy-peasy as simply interacting with the content on the site where you are viewing the content.

@schizanon @waltmossberg @Gargron

Of course, you are correct. I could site several oddities about Masto that require workarounds. But IMO, life is full of trade-offs and the respectful dialogue, no advertising or sponsored posts, no data collection, no algorithm dictating what or who you see make my Mastodon experience a joy.

I too have dropped my X account and no longer post to FB or IG.

@digginjazz @waltmossberg @Gargron we need to be honest about the problems. Dismissing them doesn't fix anything.

@Gargron @waltmossberg @mike @Mastodon there really needs to be a better solution here than ‘type your URL’. I don’t know what that is - some sort of identity cookie that does a redirect?

It’s much better in ‘apps’, like ivory, when you have it bounce into the app using universal links / extension.

@Gargron @waltmossberg @mike @Mastodon that does kinda sound like a chore.

I use the app on Android for 95% of my reading/interactions and I've never seen anything like that.