I was an early user of Twitter. I joined in June 2008. At first, I used Twitter to connect and share at conferences. I connected with a wide variety of educators. I found a bunch of interesting thoughts and links from educators on Twitter.
Mastodon
In 2018, I really tried to move to Mastodon. I loved the open-source nature of it. I briefly considered spinning up an instance specifically for educators. Mastodon was a bit too abstracted in user interface. Quite frankly, it took a bit too much work to understand. For techies, it was (and is) a phenomenal choice. There are also some really good applications to interface with Mastodon now. Ice Cubes is one that I use.
I really left Twitter for good once it was purchased by Elon Musk. I moved over to Mastodon and have been happy there. There are still some things that could be improved, but Mastodon has many features that I love. For example, I can easily post on my website and allow that post to go to Mastodon. This means that I own the material and have the “original”. I love the bookmarking feature in Mastodon. I use this regularly. The “heart” or like feature is a great way to send some “love” back to the poster without sending it your followers. The “Boost” feature (repost) is great to share the post with others. Of course there is also a reply feature. There is also a “Direct Message” feature (though it isn’t as obvious as it should be).
Mastodon also makes it very easy to share a post. Each post can be easily be embedded into a web page. Heck, you can even use an RSS Reader to follow Mastodon.
There is also an easy way to Block or Report accounts.
BlueSky
BlueSky is having a moment. There has been a ton of positive press about BlueSky. More importantly to me, Educators seem to be moving to BlueSky en masse.
I still have concerns about BlueSky. Although they have promised federation, they are still developing the ATProto federation protocol.
Federation:
What is federation and why is it important?
Federation allows for more than one person/company/billionaire to host the material. This means that the control is not limited to that one person/company/billionaire.
BlueSky is centralized at this point. In fact, BlueSky has raised money through a Series A round of investing. The investors are heavily weighted with crypto-focused cash. The thing with investors is that they are going to want their money back (and then some) at the end of the day. This may be fine. It is, after all, the American way. But as we have seen, this can also lead to the abuse of users. (See Cory Doctorow’s Enshitification post).
The concern is that a bunch of users are leaving one really bad experience for the potential of another.
On the other hand, there is a growing and vibrant educator community on BlueSky. Plus, I have found a pathway to write up a post, like this one, and post it immediately to both Mastodon and BlueSky.
POSSE
In the meantime, I’ve learned the value of POSSE (Post on your Own Server, Syndicate Everywhere). I’ve learned that having all “my stuff” somewhere I control is valuable. (I can’t tell you how many times present me has applauded past me for writing something up and putting it on my blog).
Twitter, er, X now has a lawsuit going where they claim that X, the company, owns all accounts. This means that they can control who has access to those accounts, and ultimately, what that account has published. (This is why all of these companies can sell posts to AI companies for training.)
Conclusion
I’ll keep posting on my blog and let these posts flow to other sites. I’m encouraged by BlueSky and the interactions there. I also enjoy the community of Mastodon. I’ll follow and interact with conversations on both, but I’ll keep control over the things I write.
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