Mastodon

You can ignore the following if you read this on Mastodon.
I have not been leaving Twitter yet. If it's well-engineered, Elon Musk won't be able to break Twitter, but it can still die a slow death (like Skype has been slowly dying ever since Microsoft bought it). But as a precaution, I have started an account on Mastodon. More specifically, on mastodo.fi. And it has been so far a pleasant experience. Most of the people I follow on Twitter are not on Mastodon (yet), but I am working on that! The science community has embraced Twitter ever since, and I get a big chunk of my science news via Twitter. It will take some effort to replace it.

The one thing that might be putting off some users is that you actively have to find content. Nobody and no algorithm pushes content to you. And there is no single place to open an account. You can open an account on hundreds of different Mastodon servers (https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-pick-a-mastodon-server). I briefly contemplated running my own Mastodon server, but then I joined mastodo.fi because it is - like me - located in Finland. I am still learning how stuff works. Seriously: if you are not yet on Mastodon, please consider joining! And after joining, follow me @mjeltsch@mastodo.fi!