RIP Bitcoinhackers Mastodon #145070
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After a couple years on Mastodon now, ... my hope are dashed that it would be a better alternative than Twitter, and I conclude, Mastodon sucks. Here's my top three gripes:
  1. There's no search (intentionally).
  2. There's still censorship, if you write things the admin / moderator of your server doesn't like, or get de-federated.
  3. There's no equivalent of Quote Tweets (intentionally).
  4. Ghost town (well, technically it is not, but if you are looking for the type of content you see on Bitcoin Twitter, just on Mastodon, you won't find it.) And Mastodon is just not growing very quickly.
  5. BitcoinHackers.org stopped adding new users (other than a handful of exceptions), and there's no other public bitcoin-only server (or even suitable alternative) around.
I'm going to try to use nostr (nearly exclusively), for nostr November!
Are you participating in #NostrNovember ? #87346 https://twitter.com/jb55/status/1585265194296496128 [Nitter]
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I guess I had more than three gripes.
  1. Content is not portable (you cannot backup your own content and import it on another instance). You can use "alias" to "migrate" to another instance, but if a server shuts down, your past content is gone.
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For those who don't know, Mastodon is just one server implementation of the ActivityPub protocol, which is used to send posts between social media servers. Two people on different servers can send each other Twitter-like posts and the two servers use ActivityPub to transfer those posts.
All the servers that use ActivityPub are collectively called the Fediverse. There are 6000-7000 Fediverse servers, though most of them have <50 users. You can host your own server, but most people join one of the larger servers.
I have an account on https://liberdon.com/about. Stackers will be particularly interested in https://bitcoinhackers.org/about/more. No matter which server you join, I recommend setting up more than one account across more than one server, just in case one of those servers goes down or you get banned from one.
But be warned, the federated timeline is the wild west. The servers don't spoon-feed you content or people to follow, so you will have to do a little bit of searching to find like-minded people.
I schizopost a lot on the Fediverse, so if you're into that you can follow me (https://liberdon.com/@orthzar). And check out the people who I follow and the people who follow me for others who you might like to follow.
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Thanks for the quick write-up!
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This is due for an update (as I've added / updated in the half a year since the last update), but here's a quick way to follow those in the bitcoin and related spaces who are active on Mastodon:
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Does that CSV list contain mostly active accounts? I ask, because I've found that a lot of Bitcoiners use their Fedi account just to repost whatever they post on Twitter -- which isn't necessarily bad; it's just a bit underwhelming.
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The list includes active accounts as well as the Twitter bridge accounts.
There is dramatically less bitcoin discussion on Mastodon than on Twitter. Using that list will at least let you be able to keep somewhat informed on Bitcoin happenings without even touching Twitter.
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Addendum: NVK is closing the BitcoinHackers server in 2023. He recommends switching to Nostr and/or another Fediverse server.
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See also the following post, found here on SN:
Mastodon gained 70,000 users after Musk’s Twitter takeover. I joined them #89189 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/01/mastodon-twitter-elon-musk-takeover
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All those lefties losing their shit. Elon isn't even "right," not that any of that means anything.
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