coxy

Tag: social media

  • 5 years of oslo.town

    5 years of oslo.town

    As we find ourselves in the midst of November, it’s a poignant reminder that it’s been 5 years since I had the privilege of creating oslo.town – a Mastodon server for the people of Oslo’s capital and the first Norwegian-based Mastodon server to exist.

    Mastodon is a social network that can be compared to Twitter, but with a lot better ethics around how it works. Instead of being one big network owned by one monopolistic company, it’s made up of many smaller sites that talk to each other to create one big network. And oslo.town is one of those sites!

    You can join the 2,305 members of oslo.town to follow and post to the the millions of people who have chosen to join one of the other servers around the globe.

    The community is alive and well thanks to its amazing members! While some people come and go, we have around 240 dedicated oslo.town folk who keep coming back month after month.

    I’m really lucky that some of our members are so generous and help to keep oslo.town running. They donate their own money through Patreon, Ko-Fi, PayPal or Vipps so that I don’t have to pay for everything myself. Thanks to them, we can keep the site running with minimal costs.

    Tusen-tusen-tusen takk! Thank you!

    That thanks should be extended to @hugo@masto.pt at masto.host who set us up with the server and has been doing a fine job of maintaining that ever since, ensuring we are always running the latest version of Mastodon.

    And a shout out to @angristan@mstdn.io who hosted the first ever Mastodon server that I joined back in 2017 and inspired me to start my own, and to @Gargron@mastodon.social for, you know, creating Mastodon.

    Five years has flown by!
    Let’s check back in for our ten-year anniversary.

    ✌️

  • mastodon.scot — a social network for Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

    mastodon.scot — a social network for Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

    If you’re looking for an alternative to Twitter, you don’t need to look further than Mastodon. But, if you live or come from Scotland, then you might want to join your fellow country-folk on a social network for Scotland.

    mastodon.scot is a bilingual online community, inviting Scottish folk to sign up and chat with the 1,500 other members of the site.

    And, if you don’t know anyone on the site, you can always invite your friends or follow some of the 2 million people on the wider network – called the fediverse.

    A Mastodon instance

    mastodon.scot is based on the same technology as the social network that I run for the people of Oslo — oslo.town. Both sites are able to ‘talk’ to one another and members of oslo.town are able to follow and interact with members of mastodon.scot.

    If you want to get to grips with Mastodon, but don’t live in either Scotland or Oslo, check out some of the Mastodon instances you can join.

    And, if you have any questions about mastodon.scot, check out the profile of @trumpet@mastodon.scot for more information.

  • toot.wales — a social network for Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

    toot.wales — a social network for Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

    If you’re looking for an alternative to Twitter, you don’t need to look further than Mastodon. But, if you live or come from Wales, then you might want to join your fellow country-folk on a social network for Wales.

    toot.wales (or Tŵt Cymru) is a bilingual online community, inviting Welsh folk to sign up and chat with the 3,500 other members of toot.wales.

    And, if you don’t know anyone on the site, you can always invite your friends or follow some of the 2 million people on the wider network – called the fediverse.

    A Mastodon instance

    toot.wales is based on the same technology as the social network that I run for the people of Oslo — oslo.town. Both sites are able to ‘talk’ to one another and members of oslo.town are able to follow and interact with members of toot.wales.

    If you want to get to grips with Mastodon, but don’t live in either Wales or Oslo, check out some of the Mastodon instances you can join.

    And, if you have any questions about toot.wales, check out the profile of @jaz@toot.wales for more information.

  • @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

    Stewart Lee Improvised Around Industry Prejudice To Make His Name (YouTube) — stand-up comedian Steward Lee having a conversation with stand-up comedian Jamali Maddix. A nice insight into the behind-the-scenes of comedy. Also available as a podcast.

    One Of The Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working With The FBI (Buzzfeed News) — The FBI does not have the ability to freely browse genetic profiles but can match suspects samples against the Family Tree DNA database. Probably not what users expected to happen when they just wanted to find their ancestors.

    The Welfare Effects of Social Media (Stanford University Research Paper) — researchers from Stanford University and New York University recruited over 2000 people. Half of them turned off their Facebook accounts for four weeks in return for $102 – a value in line with previous studies of Facebook’s “worth” to users. The “quitters” spent more time with their friends and family and were also noticeably happier.

    All Our Patent Are Belong To You (Tesla) — Elon Musk announces that people are free to use Tesla-patented technology “in good faith” without being sued by Tesla.

    Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

    Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla – https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

    What the most interesting things you saw on the web this week? Let me know in the comments.

    Previously.