When Twitter started going downhill, which was before Musk took over, and people started looking for alternatives I first looked at Mastodon as a replacement. It was federated (no central server or owner) and had a lot of open source options for using the tool. The issue it faced and still faces is that it is federated, meaning there are different people in different communities and getting all of those posts in a single location is a lot of work; And engaging and being engaged in those communities is just as difficult. I still have an account there and use it but the community feels less like a community and more like a bunch of tech geeks talking at each other, which is fine, but it doesn’t scratch the Twitter itch.

Then Bluesky came along and had a centralized community but it seems to gravitate towards politics, which again, is fine, but I want to talk about airplanes, tech, politics, bikes, and just life in general in one place and Bluesky makes some of that possible but again, engagement outside of certain topics drops off a cliff. Some items posted get a lot of traction but other items just get zero engagement and it’s hard for me to know the why. I guess it comes down to Bluesky being a bit more niche and having specific types of users who utilize the service.

Threads is the third option but I’ve tried using it and because it so heavily relies on the “algorithm” to show content you get posts you are not interested in showing up in your feed and there is not a great way to tweak what you do and don’t see. There is also a lot more AI generated content on Threads which is something I have zero interest in.

Is it a me problem? I want to follow a bunch of people who have similar interests and see their posts in chronological order without the tool deciding what I do and don’t see.

Maybe it’s time to move to microblogging and we all just write posts on our own sites and follow who we want. That idea probably leaves us in the same predicament that Mastodon has, a disjointed and disconnected community that isn’t effective at communicating with the desired audience.