Seconded. Seeing some articles written by people signalling that they don’t like Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, by announcing that they’re migrating to Mastodon makes me wonder why they don’t just step down from their digital stage altogether and join the rest of us.
I suppose they’ll need to pen an article about it first to let us know.
I'm not really a seasoned user of either, but my take for now:
1. Mastodon has different dynamics than Twitter. Rather than throwing a bunch of stuff I didn't ask for in an effort to boost "engagement", Mastodon just gives me exactly what I asked for. This results in a slow moving feed of nothing but what I subscribe to. I like it.
2. Mastodon seems to have a much better content/noise ratio and to be better moderated. I don't want to be surrounded by hateful people. I'm not looking for a "public square". I'm looking for pleasant and useful interactions.
What does the EU instance have to do with any of this? The instance started before there was any talk of anyone buying Twitter.
edit: HN won't let me reply, so:
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I had a whole comment written, but you deleted and remade before I posted, and I lost what I wrote.
But the gist is, no, the existence of the instance alone has nothing to do with Musk.
It could possibly have nudged them to speed up existing plans, but that's not the same as "EU signalling that Elon Musk is bad for the democracy." It's them signaling proprietary social media under the influence of a non-EU power is bad for democracy in the EU.
This is one of the possible failure modes they hoped to avoid by exploring alternatives to commercial social media. The conversations are long-running and high-level.
I suppose they’ll need to pen an article about it first to let us know.