I have never been an "online community first" person. The internet is how I stay in touch with people I met in real life. I'm not a "tweet comments at celebrities" guy. I was never funny enough to be the funniest person on Twitter.
So when Twitter was accidentally purchased
Yup.
Though I thought of it as the Internet from 2010. No ads. No algo. All chronological. Once you figure out where the slow mode setting is and turn it off, Mastodon is the fucking best. I even pay a voluntary sub every month to help my instance host itself.
And it requires just enough setup (5-10 minutes tops) that the vast majority of the Internet is too lazy to use it, which keeps the quality high.
Slow mode?
Yeah, when you’re on the global feed, posts fly by at a dizzying rate. Turning on slow mode makes it so that they stop auto-scrolling and only scroll when you click that you want to see more posts.