MacKuba

🍎 Kuba Suder's blog on Mac & iOS development

Social media update - Elon's Twitter and Mastodon

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Update 01.03.2023: Updated Mastodon address - my previous instance has been unexpectedly shut down and I had to make a new account. I’ve decided to set up my own server to make sure it won’t happen again.

Update 09.11.2023: I made a follow-up post which talks about the social media related projects I’ve been working on this year, and about Bluesky, where I’m spending most of the time now.

This is just a small update about Twitter and Mastodon, since things have been… very unstable and chaotic in the last few weeks, as you’ve surely noticed if you log in to these even occassionally.

Twitter has been my internet home for over 13 years now. I started using it when my colleagues from Lunar Logic showed it to me, and especially in the recent years it’s been my main source of information and news. It’s where I went to keep track of what was happening in the Apple/Swift world, find useful tips about UIKit, SwiftUI or Xcode, follow the news, rumors and dramas on the Crypto Twitter, and find out every day what important thing was happening in the world, including following the Covid pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year.

Like most of the people I’m following, I’m not very happy about Elon’s takeover and his actions, how he randomly makes changes to the rules based on his current mood, blocks journalists who write about him and how he fired or scared away most of the people who kept the site working. I’m worried about how the future looks for the platform, if Twitter will even exist in this form a year or two from now. I wish this all hadn’t happened, and I’m angry at the people who made it happen for their own gain.

But so far, Twitter is still working and is still a great place to get the news, tips and information about so many things. I’m not ready to give up on this site as long as the feed is loading and there are some tweets left to read.

I’ve been trying out Mastodon like everyone else and I slowly get more comfortable there, but it still feels a bit alien to me. It feels like when you move in to a new apartment and everything is different there than you’re used to, some things are missing, some things are better, some things are worse than in your old place, but a lot of your subconscious habits and muscle memory stop working. I had some ways of using Twitter that worked for me and a bunch of private tools I wrote for myself to help me automate some things - I will have to figure this all out again now.

So I am on Mastodon, if only because I don’t want to miss out on things, but I am still on Twitter and I’m planning to stay and keep posting there, as long as it stays usable. I will probably be posting more on Twitter than Mastodon, because I feel more comfortable there. I hope some of my friends and people I follow stay on the platform, or at least check in from time to time.

So here’s where you can find and follow me (updated 09.11.2023):