I shut my Mastodon account earlier this week.
The main reason was wanting to remove an attention sink, one less app that I might refresh to look for stimulation. While I love the concept of microblogging, and the existence of the fediverse, it was not working for me.
There were a few specific issues with Mastodon itself:
- The protocol ties any content to the domain name it’s produced under. This means it is impossible to properly migrate posts to another account. I was not aware of this when I signed up, and it’s a fairly significant constraint.
- The existence of an algorithmic ‘trending’ feed encouraged people to write content to appeal to an audience. I’d come to Mastodon to avoid that sort of karma-farming.
- While I love microblogging, I hadn’t managed to build a large enough community. Looks like everyone went to Bluesky, and I’m not going near another VC-funded algorithmic system.
Rob Shearer gives a more detailed breakdown on some of the issues in his Mastodon Exit Interview.
I’m looking forward to getting back to blogging – and wordpress can now link to the fediverse as well.
Earlier this year I looked back at my old blog posts and I miss using it for more developed thoughts that I’d write on twitter/Bluesky/mastodon. Blogging and its RSS framework already provide most of what I actually want from the fediverse.