We wanted to join Mastodon for reasons that will surprise no one reading this. (When a flailing, inept, fascist-inclined billionaire takes over a service you use, you start to look around for options.)
Other social media platforms have also had an uplift in membership and publicity since the dreary Musk of failure enveloped Twitter, but Mastodon feels particularly exciting.
I think a lot of people find it slightly awkward to join Mastodon because of the ways it's unlike other social media, but a platform that is built on open source software, that it uses an open protocol: I'm genuinely hopeful that can be a different kind of social media, and less susceptible to the pitfalls that are undermining the hypercapitalist models of not just Twitter but also Facebook, Instagram…