Elon Musk’s Twitter in the name of ‘Free Speech’ has just banned anyone mentioning that they have accounts on other platforms – whether that be Truth Social, Facebook, Mastodon or anywhere.
This is an unconscionable move clearly designed to disincentivize people from leaving the platform, locking them into his ecosystem. It is petulant, childish, selfish and obnoxious, so entirely in line with our expectations of Musk’s behavior. And it is obviously completely anti-freedom of speech.
It’s also a clear and public admission that people are fleeing the platform in droves as a result of his appalling views and policies. But of course, the more he tries to trap people here, the more rapidly people will leave.
Since I’m not able to easily post my links on Twitter, I’m just going to do them on all the other places instead. So this is where I’m going:
(1) I’m moving most of my daily posting to Mastodon. The current clients are not super great and I know it’s a pain choosing a server (by default you probably want mastodon.social), but I think it’s the best option and future clients in development are far better. My address there is http://mastodon.cloud/@tomcoates – that may change in short order, but when it does, everything should transition over automatically.
(2) This is my personal blog and I haven’t been updating it very much, but I have a feeling that’s going to change relatively soon.
(3) I’m on Instagram and I use that pretty regularly, but it’s mostly just me playing with my fancy Leica or posting stories of my potting adventures, so not for everyone. https://www.instagram.com/tomcoates
(4) I’m also on Post and my username is there is @tomcoates
If I join anything else I’ll probably update the post above, rather than make a new one.
Until a couple of years ago I was working on a product called planetary. It’s available on the App Store, and it uses a truly decentralized protocol. For various reasons I’m not on it very much and I don’t know that I can in good conscience totally recommend it, but I thought it may be interesting to some of you invested in Secure Scuttlebutt and other crypto-based social stuff.
Otherwise, let’s start this transition and go somewhere else. I’m bored to death of Musk and his poisonous drama.