Tag: mastodon

  • oslo.town

    oslo.town

    Previously, on this blog, I have mentioned Mastodon – the free and open source social network that is akin to Twitter. The more keen-eyed reader might have also noticed that my username on Mastodon was @lychee@mstdn.io

    If you have never heard of Mastodon before and wonder how it’s different from Twitter or Facebook, then you can watch this short video:

    Well, after spending some time playing around with what the social network has to offer, I decided to create my own community at oslo.town

    My new username on Mastodon is @matt@oslo.town and whilst the website domain is clearly targeted to residents of Norway’s capital city of Oslo – anyone is welcome to join. Sign up to Mastodon today!

    If you don’t want to sign up to oslo.town, maybe one of these other communities tickles your fancy:

    And remember: you can sign up to any local community and still connect with the wider world. So, regardless of your Mastodon username, follow me:

    @matt@oslo.town

    Thanks.

  • @coxy on Twitter

    @coxy on Twitter

    I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. It’s one big mass of opinion; swirling up hate, online abuse, depressing news and analysis. Twitter is where people go to promote their shit I have no interest in. It’s another site that tries to build a profile about you to advertise on your interests.

    And I hate that I love it.

    Not long ago I told myself “No more Twitter”. This was soon after I discovered Mastodon – an alternative to Twitter. Mastodon is ad-free and open-source. It’s many small communities with different personalities that join to make one network.

    Mastodon is by no means perfect, but has a more respectable ethos. What Mastodon doesn’t have is mass adoption. It doesn’t have my friends. Only strangers. And so, I found myself returning to Twitter.

    A screenshot of Twitter showing the header and profile information of the user @coxy as of March 2019.

    In a bid to make my Twitter experience more enjoyable, I needed to conduct a “spring clean”. This involved;

    • Making my account ‘Private’ 🔐
    • Reducing Following from 450+ to 210 😬
    • Reducing Followers from 1,500+ to 250 📉

    After taking a look at who I was following, and who was following me, the amount of nonsense surprised me. Close to 1,000 of the accounts following me were either businesses, spam or inactive users. Another 200 more were complete strangers that I had never interacted with in my life.

    It took a lot of clicking to whittle down so many users to so few. There were a few tough decisions in there too; will I offend this person if I unfollow them? This stranger looks kind, but do I want them following me? Oh, a well-known TV personality is following me! What?! Why?

    Now my Twitter is ‘clean’, it feels like a fresh start.

    If you’re keen to stay on social media, I recommend grabbing a cup of tea, popping on some background music, and conducting your own clean-up. It’s refreshing for your digital soul.

  • Links of the week

    Links of the week

    Guess what? Facebook still tracks you on Android apps (even if you don’t have a Facebook account) (Privacy International) — Apps like Spotify, Duolingo, Skyscanner, and Yelp all send data to Facebook from the moment they are launched. Several apps fix this, others don’t.

    Mojeek (mojeek.com) — A search engine based in the United Kingdom. They claim to not track you, have their own index of around 2.3 billion pages and aren’t based off Google, Yandex, or Bing. Terrible branding though.

    Manchester United floor PSG as Marcus Rashford’s late penalty caps comeback (The Guardian) — Last night, Manchester United knocked PSG out of the Champions League with a 3-1 victory and a last-minute penalty. It was an emotional roller coaster. Unbelievable, Jeff.

    Mastodon (joinmastodon.org) –– It’s just like Twitter, except not owned by a big company trying to make money off you. Join an existing server, or install your own – they all talk to each other to create one big network.

    How to limit which companies track your internet activity (Popular Science) — A guide to how you can optimize the settings in your web browser to be a little bit more private than when you first install it.

    Previously, previously, previously.