By: 4.0b Keith Axline - CoFounder | Published 6/2022
You did it when you went from having no email to having email. You did it when you went from AOL to Netscape. You did it when you went from email to Facebook.
It’s time time to make another change. From Twitter, a closed, private, ad-driven network to a platform that’s open, permissionless, and customizable to be what you want it to be.
This new platform will save us. It will free us from worrying about who Twitter decides to kick off or who maliciously buys the company. It’s open source, it’s been around a long time, and its users are very happy.
But …
It’s different. It’s called Mastodon and you probably tried it for five minutes at some point in the past and gave up because you couldn’t find your Twitter people there. And your followers didn’t magically appear there at the same time.
Like switching from Windows to Mac, there are familiar concepts but it just feels … uncomfortable. But only for a short time, and then it becomes the new normal. And once you switch you can’t imagine going back.
It’s this chasm of discomfort that we all need to cross right now. Fortunately, We’ve devised ways of easing the discomfort as much as possible in the name of bringing over the masses. (Spoiler alert: The main discomfort is getting used to having multiple Mastodon accounts, like you have multiple email accounts. Yep, that’s it.)
If you’re already convinced, skip to the How To section. Still on the fence? Read on.
Why switch?
We use Twitter like a public utility, but it’s not. A private company should not be the arbiter of free speach. Twitter itself doesn’t even want to be in this position. Humans need a way to communicate that’s independent of a single entity’s profits and motives.
It may not feel like you’re being censored, but the entire UX of Twitter is nudging you towards behavior that is solely meant to achieve the platform’s objectives. It’s not helping you achieve your goals if they do not align with the business’s goals.
To think that there is 100% overlap between what you want and what Twitter wants, both now and indefinitely into the future … well, good luck with that.
Also, if a single individual can buy your public utility and shape it to their whims, it’s not a utility. Nor is it a very reliable communication tool.
Imagine being no more worried about Elon Musk buying Twitter as him buying Hotmail. Oh darn, I guess I’ll just use my other email address now.
Why Mastodon?
There have been many products over the years that attempted to replace Twitter and lure away its users. Mastodon by far has been the most successful in grabbing mainstream attention. Here’s a quick rundown of other reasons it’s a good choice.
- Feature parity and familiar UX. To someone to be open to changing platforms, you need to be able to assure them that they can still do all the stuff they want to do on the new one.
- The right to exit. The problem with Twitter now is that we can’t leave it. Twitter can do whatever they want to the platform and we have to stay there because that’s where our friends are. Like with email, with Mastodon we can change providers with minimal friction and that ensures most providers will act according to their users’ interests.
- Open source and credibly neutral. A necessity for the right to exit, user controll, trust, and neutrality. If you don’t like something with the platform – fork it, change it, and publish it.
- Community. The hardest part about building software is getting people to use it. Mastodon has done the hard work of sticking around and gradually growing since 2016. It’s a huge moat that will be very difficult for any new Twitter clone or competitor to cross. Even if a new product were able to gain attention quickly, they would not have the Lindy effect that Mastodon has.
And the biggest reason of all:
We have to choose something, and it has to be the same thing.
If we all fracture to different platforms, each one will never give us the network effects we now enjoy on Twitter.
Mastodon can accomodate everyone. Hell, even Trump used it as the software behind Truth Social. Whatever your political leanings or preferences, Mastodon can be your thing.
We’re all just agreeing to use email here, we’re not saying anything about the content of emails we will write, or what people should write.
I’m in, what do I do?
We’ve compiled a series of steps that will ease you into your own Mastodon presence and allow you to move over as your curiosity and followers dictate.
By the end, your tweets will be cross-posting to your Mastodon account, and all your Twitter followers will know how to find you there.
With this, you’ll be able to go about your regular Twitter usage uninterrupted. If Mastodon ends up being a dud or no one follows you there, no big deal.
But! If momentum builds towards a migration
automatically cross-post your Twitter feed to a new Mastodon account, and let people on Twitter know you’re moving there. Slowly.
This migration will start as a trickle, but if enough of us do it, we’ll fundamentally change the social media landscape.
Step 1
Create a Mastodon account.
This is where a lot of new users get hung up. Like email, you can choose a provider like Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, etc. But if you’re just starting out, one is as good as another, you just want to start getting email messages.
So we recommend signing up with mastodon.social, so your Mastodon handle will be @username@mastodon.social. (Mine is @kaxline@mastodon.social)
If you want to learn more about the trade offs of picking different servers/providers, go here.
Step 2
Cross-post from Twitter.
Now that people can find you on Mastodon, let’s publish all your tweets to your account there. This way you can be discovered by new followers on Mastodon as well as provide your existing Twitter followers a way to not miss out on your stuff if they switch to Mastodon as well.
Fortunately there’s a community funded tool that will do this for you:
Just athenticate with both your Mastodon and Twitter accounts and then choose options for how you’d like it to post on your behalf.
Step 3
Update your Twitter profile.
This may be the most important step since it will help everyone else migrate as well:
Put your new Mastodon handle in your Twitter profile.
For example: “Come join me on Mastodon @kaxline@mastodon.social.”
Done
That’s it. Now get back to more important stuff. Check on your Mastodon profile every once in a while to see if anyone you know from Twitter has messaged you. Be patient.
If you want you can setup email notifications on Mastodon just so you don’t completely forget about it.
But What About _______?
Here are some other promising platforms that we considered along with the reason they’re not as good of a fit as Mastodon.
- Farcaster
- Orbis
- diaspora*
It’s like email. You can have many Mastodon addresses at different domains. Like @kaxline@mastodon.social and @kaxline@social.journodao.xyz. Just pick one you want to use and make that your canonical handle you give people.