Mastodon Info - Please Read
Hi folks, Blackheath Weather is now on Mastodon social media! Mastodon is a fairly new (2017) social media platform that is just brilliant. It is owned by the people, not a billionaire. As of November 2022, it has been growing very fast (up to 100,000 new members a day) due to many people feeling disillusioned with traditional social media.
If you prefer a video explanation, go here: What Is Mastodon? - A great explanation.
I prefer to use the mobile home page rather than an app on my phone but all reports are that these apps are better than the official app - Tusky or Fedilab are best on Android and Metatext or Toot for iPhone.
Whilst it will likely continue to grow and become much bigger, it never feels huge because each community resides on its own server made up of hundreds or thousands of people, not hundreds of millions. You can still easily follow people from other servers but you can choose how you want to view your timeline - be it just those you follow, those on your server or everyone on Mastodon. It's your choice, not some silly commercial algorithm's choice, like most social media.
Mastodon is what is called a decentralised social media environment. A group of people set up a server, for you to join. In other words, it is not run by a single CEO like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerburg, rather, it is run by people, like you and I. It is made of up of thousands of servers world wide and people choose which server to join. I am still Blackheath Weather there and I belong to aus.social server (which may be full now) but there is also a new aussie server called theblower.au which you can view via the link above called 'Oz Sign Up 2' or try 'Oz Sign up 1'. Or you can join any other server available.
Try servers here: Mastodon Aussie Servers etc - Select 'Oceania' To start with.
Imagine a country made up of many small to medium sized islands - with friendly, supportive communities on each island run by a collaborative administration. Well, that is what Mastodon is. Even if a particular island/server went 'bad' with poor behaviour from admins or users, this server can be cut off (rare) or limited by other servers. If the good hearted people from that 'bad' server still wanted to be part of Mastodon, all they have to do is join another server and move their followers across.
So, if it interests you, check out Mastodon. It has so many checks and balances in its set up, that it is much more given to healthy online community life without commercial (and alogorithm) interference. See you there! Just search for Blackheath Weather or @blakeheathsnow@aus.social
PS: IMO, don't cancel your current social media account with FB or Twitter etc, it's still worth keeping - just in case it all improves in these places.
Mastodon Tips - 1/ Find followers by going to a friend (like, me) and view the followers there. 2/ Use the # menu option to search for topics and people. 3/ 'Boosting' a post is what gets it to be seen by others. 4/ Use hashtags in your post like #photography, #friendship #poetry # gardening etc. Mastodon loves hash tags. It helps people find you. 5/ Select 'Local' to just view your local server's posts and 'Federated' to view all posts on Mastodon. 6/ To mute, block and report an account etc, click on their name, then the three dots next to that, to find options.
My Mastodon Presence - Look for the green ticks next to my links on both of these accounts. Some new users, moving across from Twitter etc, are putting blue or green ticks next to their profile photo but this isn't official.
My Official Mastodon address
