Yesterday, I tried staying off social media and just read a book, watched a bit of MasterClass, and listened to music. It was a quieter day in my mind.

Normally, I would be scrolling through Mastodon or Instagram. I'd have a different emotional reaction every few seconds, from delight to disgust and everything in between. It's tiring, and I've been noticing the impact in my day-to-day life.

You may well be one to enjoy the occasional doomscroll, and I'm not judging you for it, or suggesting I'm better because I read a book. That's not what this post is about.

The point is that attention is a precious and highly valuable currency. It's called "The Attention Economy" after all. I'm suggesting that you be aware of how you're spending your attention, and what you're getting in return.

I know there's a cost to having my thoughts and emotions going along with these videos, or toots. To free myself from those costs, my awareness returns to my immediate surroundings. I start thinking about and putting energy into The Real World.

The downside is that I feel a disconnect from the rest of the world. There's a lot upsetting about the planet right now - genocide, ecocide, fascism, death, suffering, destruction. But right here, right now, it's a quiet Sunday and a perfect day for building a snowman with my son. We have a baby on the way, and family coming to visit, and Christmas coming up quickly. It's a lovely time in our lives.

So to add in stress and tragedy and worry and sadness, it doesn't feel right. My son doesn't need all of that energy coming into our home. There's absolutely nothing I can do about the world's problems.

Maybe I can write a Letter To The Editor, or to my member of parliament, about my feelings in regards to a war (or whatever). It's not going to make much of a dent.

Ok, maybe I can organise or join a protest. But then I have to be deliberate about my time and energy. But hey, an hour at a protest is surely more useful than an hour reading articles or watching the news.

If I just want to understand a geopolitical situation, I'm better off reading books about history. Chances are, I'm not actually that interested. I just feel emotionally drawn to look at videos of cities being destroyed, to feel my heart fill with outrage and sadness for these orphaned children.

There's a lot of news every day, but rarely is it of any significance. It's usually something mundane, and almost never about something important like the end of a war. And even when there is big international news, nothing changes for me. It's still a quiet Sunday perfect for building a snowman.

Most online content isn't at all relevant to me. It's outrage about one thing or another, politics from a country I don't live in, or something personal that happened to someone else, or cat videos. No disrespect to cat videos. Everyone loves cat videos. But they're forgettable. And when you spend hours consuming forgettable media, your life becomes forgettable.

There can be some discomfort in stopping - withdrawal symptoms - as my body craves the dopamine, adrenaline, ups and downs of this sort of content. To stop feels like boredom. But that's just it. Boredom is a returning to the mundane, the every day predictability of the here and now. This boredom is an energy in itself, a potentiality, a seeking that can be focused on the tangible instead of the ephemeral. I can go do the dishes while listening to music instead of scrolling. Or read a book. I can choose what to do with my attention instead of suckling at the teat of The Algorithm. I can write, or do my taxes, or go for a walk. Or build a snowman.

It used to be fun to post online and share things with friends. It didn't matter what you said or did, you'd get comments and likes from your friends. Now, that has all changed.

I don't remember when The Algorithm showed up. At first nobody noticed. Our feeds didn't change much. When we opened the Social Network, we'd see some big news from a friend at the top. It was helpful not to have the important things buried, so we thanked The Algorithm.

Slowly, eventually, things got confusing. We would share some things with friends, and nobody would see them. We would share other things with friends, and they would go viral. We all struggled to understand what The Algorithm was doing.

Only The Algorithm decides who will see your posts. Nobody understands the rhyme or reason of it all. Not even the people who work at the Social Network.

You must be very careful not to make The Algorithm angry. But nobody really knows what makes The Algorithm angry.

Some think it's the words we use that anger The Algorithm. People whisper in the shadows, "Do not use this word, or you will be punished." "Use this emoji instead of this word to hide the meaning from The Algorithm." "Uh oh, it seems The Algorithm has learned of the emoji, use this one instead."

Others think it may be our behaviour that can make The Algorithm happy.

"Be sure to like and comment on others' posts to boost your reach." "Log in once a day to show The Algorithm that you're a faithful servant." "If you don't enable push notifications, The Algorithm will have its revenge."

I've seen so many people become a slave to The Algorithm. They started off sharing the things they care about. They didn't get much response. Then, one random day, they shared yet another thing. Maybe it was a photo of themselves at the beach. Maybe it was a funny video they made on a whim. Maybe it was a meme they made about a politician. Suddenly, The Algorithm smiled at them and showered them with more attention than they had ever experienced in their entire lives.

The next day, still glowing from their newly found fame, they shared again. The Algorithm ignored them. They stared at their notifications, but nothing came. Nobody saw what they posted.

"What does The Algorithm want from me?" they wondered. They tried sharing something else, something very similar to what had succeeded. Maybe it was another photo of themselves in a swimsuit. Or another funny video. Or they made another meme. The Algorithm nodded at them and they got some more attention, but nothing close to what they had experienced before. They hungered for more, but didn't know how to get what they desired. They were trying to win a game, but had no idea what the rules were.

Soon, they were posting the same thing every day. Swimsuit photos. Funny videos. Political memes. Whatever it was The Algorithm had liked at first, they tried again and again to recreate it. But it was never as successful as that first time.

See, The Algorithm is doing more than shaping your feed. The Algorithm is shaping you, and everyone on the Social Network. The Algorithm rewards and punishes us at random, leaving us to guess what the secret factors are. The Algorithm encourages us to self-censor, or to create content we don't care about. We just want to be heard. We just want to share and connect with friends. The Algorithm knows this and knows how far we're willing to go to get what we desire.

Well, I refuse to be a slave to The Algorithm. I'm not going to try to guess what The Algorithm wants. I'm not going to play its games.

I'm going to spend my time in places without a gatekeeper. I'll be writing on my own blog. I'll be scrolling through my RSS reader to read others' blog posts. I'll be listening to podcasts in my podcast player. I'll be reading books and listening to audio books. I'll be reading and posting and liking and boosting on Mastodon. I invite you to join me.

I quit Twitter at the end of 2020, and haven't really used social media at all since then. So when I heard in the news that others were ditching Twitter for Mastodon, I got really excited!

I signed up for Mastodon back in May 2019 and, at the time, I wrote on there: "I just heard about Mastodon a few days ago. I keep spelling it Mastadon. It's a really cool platform and architecture, and I would love to see it completely replace Twitter one day. Do you think it could?"

It seems like that time has come. Not everybody has moved from Twitter to Mastodon, but a large number of developers have, and that's what matters most to me.

A wild month

In 14 years of using Twitter, I never went viral. The closest I came was when I published my blog post Svelte is the most beautiful web framework I've ever seen. The tweet linking to that post received 40 retweets, which had my head spinning at the time.

Well, in the past month, I've had three toots that were more successful than that. And one of those went absolutely viral! I was excited about Mastodon and hoping all these new migrants would stay, so I wrote "Boost this toot if you're planning on sticking around Mastodon whether or not it becomes more popular than the birdsite.", and so far I've received 217 replies, 3,254 favourites and 5,765 boosts!

I also tooted a list of web developers worth following and that received 77 favourites and 52 boosts.

I'm not trying to brag, I just want to demonstrate that the reach and discovery on Mastodon is so much greater than Twitter. Part of that is that there is no algorithm on Mastodon, part of it is that people can browse "local" or "federated" feeds to find new posts from people they don't follow, so it's much easier for new users to reach a lot more people. I also find that the quality of interactions is higher, and the conversations more intelligent and engaging.

As another example, I tried putting a poll on Mastodon and Twitter at the same time. I had 7 people answer the Twitter poll, but 43 on Mastodon! This and other experiments I've done have cemented for me just how much more easily I can reach and connect with other like-minded people on Mastodon.

Whatever it is, I've definitely experienced a lot more joy interacting on this platform. It's wonderful that there are no ads, there's no company profiting off our use of the platform, and we can own our own content. It's not a new company trying to launch a startup to replace Twitter, it's a platform built on an open web standard that will surely be around for a very long time!

What is the platform?

As a web developer, I was excited to learn that Mastodon is actually built upon ActivityPub, a web standard produced by the W3C, the standards body behind other technologies you may have heard of, like HTML and CSS.

ActivityPub is similar to RSS but with pushing content instead of polling a feed. It allows web sites to publish content, and have other web sites subscribe to that content. When a new post is available, the content is pushed to each of the subscribers so that they immediately find out about it.

The world of systems that work with ActivityPub is referred to as the Fediverse. Mastodon is a Twitter-like interface built upon this platform. There is also Pixelfed, an Instagram-like platform, and PeerTube, a YouTube-like platform. Anybody can create new platforms that integrate with the rest of the Fediverse, just by implementing the ActivityPub protocol. There is even a WordPress ActivityPub plugin so that any WordPress blog can be followed by others on the Fediverse.

Mastodon Servers

If you've heard anything about Mastodon, you've heard about how you have to choose a server. This is a weird step for many people, at least compared to large corporate centralised social media, but it's what we already have to do for things like e-mail (though most people choose gmail.com). There is no central Mastodon server, so you need to choose one to get started. But the great thing is, you can move to a different server, and anyone who follows you will automatically follow your new account (though you can't move your posts). You can even run your own server!

One easy strategy is just to pick any server that is currently accepting new accounts, and then accept that you may well decide to move elsewhere once you get a feel for things and settle in and discover a server that resonates better with you.

You can go to the Mastodon website or instances.social to browse servers. You could choose one that is somewhat relevant to your interests or location, or you could choose one that is totally generic. Or just choose one that has a name that you like. Like email, it will be part of your address.

Some development-related servers include hachyderm.io, fosstodon.org, indieweb.social, front-end.social, and toot.cafe, though the last two are closed for registrations at the time of writing this.

Back in 2019, I started off on toot.cafe, but decided the next day that I'd rather be on a bigger, more popular server, so I moved to mastodon.social. But earlier this month when I started using Mastodon heavily, I actually decided I'd rather be on a smaller server focused on web dev, so that I would have a "local" feed more useful and interesting to me, so I moved back to toot.cafe!

Migrating to Mastodon from Twitter

If you were already active on Twitter, you'll be glad to know there are tools to help you migrate. I highly recommend you check out Movetodon, where you can log in with both your Twitter and Mastodon accounts, and you can search for and automatically follow people. Of the 1025 people I follow on Twitter, I can find 164 of them on Mastodon, and more are moving over every day.

If you do decide to move over, be sure to put your new Mastodon address in your Twitter bio, so others can find you using automated tools as well.

I really hope this migration sticks, and so I think the best thing we can do support it is to participate as heavily as we can on there, to follow interesting people, to boost interesting posts, and to be active and contribute to the conversation so that others enjoy it there and stick with it too.

Follow me!

If you'd like to follow me, you can sign up for Mastodon (or another Fediverse server) and follow me at https://toot.cafe/@JesseSkinner. I hope to see you there!

You've likely heard about Distributed Computing, or at least some of the well-known projects like SETI@Home that got a lot of publicity in the early days of the Internet.

Distributed Computing has come a long way since then. Currently, there are dozens of projects that use Distributed Computing, and many of them solve some very important problems, like finding a cure for diseases like AIDS and Cancer, solving complex physics and mathematics problems, or trying to understand climate change.

Most projects use the BOINC platform. Rather than choose a single project, you can download a single program, then choose to help as many projects as you are interested in.

Running Distributed Computing software on your computer takes advantage of unused resources (CPU, RAM and disk space) to benefit the world at large. It takes just a few minutes to install and start making a small but significant contribution to humanity.

I really hate phishing emails for two reasons. First, they're just more annoying spam in my inbox. Second, I know that some innocent people out there are going to be frauded because of these emails.

Thanks to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, there's something we can do to help stop phishing. And it's really easy too.

The next time you get an email asking you to log in to a banking or credit card site, even if it's from a bank you've never heard of, please report it. You only need to:

1. Create a new email to [email protected]
2. Drag and drop the phishing email, so that it gets sent as an attachment. (Don't just forward the email or some of the headers will get lost.)

Even if you forget all this, at least remember that you can always search "report phishing" on Google to find the Anti-Phishing Working Group — right now it's the first result.

Phishing will never go away completely, but the more people that report it, the less victims there will be.