If you’ve been at least somewhat on Twitter for a while, the past couple of days may have made it worth it. The confusion is comic, the resignations dramatic, the uncertainty exciting, and on top of that some people are doing an excellent job creating hilarity out of the broken verification system (feel free to share your favorites in the comments).

Some folks are moving from Twitter to Mastodon, a similar kind of social media platform, though (for now) with less corporate interference (algorithms, ads) in what you see. Mastodon is somewhat decentralized, which means that when you sign up for it, you sign up for one of its servers (sort of like a neighborhood in Mastodon). Which server you pick doesn’t seem to matter in terms of who you can follow or interact with, but it does form part of your Mastodon address.

From what I can tell, many of the philosophers and other academics joining Mastodon appear to be doing so through the zirk.us server, and that’s what I just did. My address is DailyNous@zirk.us, and you can find me here.

I’m sticking around on Twitter (here) for the time being, but I’ll also be trying out Mastodon.

Will Twitter disintegrate into uselessness? Will Mastodon take off? Who knows? According to Kelly Truelove, who keeps track of, among other things, data about philosophers on social media, 3% of philosophers with at least 1000 Twitter followers have added a Mastodon address to their Twitter bios (one way of letting their followers know how to find them on Mastodon). We’ll see if that number increases over the coming days.

Have a good weekend, philosofriends.

Originally appeared on Daily Nous Read More