a bit of advice

Elon Musk’s imminent purchase of Twitter has a good many people scurrying for the exits, and some of them are coming to micro.blog — which is awesome! I’ve written often here about micro.blog, and here’s a selection:

Micro.blog and the open web

Why a social network that scales up is a bad thing

On Cal Newport’s New Yorker essay that described micro.blog

Some “hidden” features of micro.blog

But let me add a bit of advice for those who are coming to micro.blog from Twitter: You need to leave Twitter behind altogether. Micro.blog isn’t Twitter and doesn’t want to be.

Let’s start with this: on Twitter it’s hard not to be aware of your follower count; on micro.blog you cannot know how many people are following you. Moreover, there is no re-post button. If people want to link to your micro-post they have to do so manually, by copying the link and inserting it into their own post. Similarly: there is no like button. If you like someone’s post you have to reply to them to say so. And: there is no algorithmic feed — it’s just chronological, there’s no other option.

What all this adds up to: On micro.blog, you have absolutely no incentive to flex, shitpost, self-promote, or troll. You’re there to post interesting things and/or chat with people. Nothing else makes sense.

And that’s why it’s great.

So if you’re coming over from Twitter, please try to leave your Twitter habits and reflexes behind. They won’t help you at micro.blog.

UPDATE: Here are some brief thoughts about Mastodon, which, by contrast, is exactly like Twitter, in all the bad ways.