I really hope this blowhard doesn’t ruin Twitter for all of us. I haven’t left Twitter and I’m not suggesting you all do so, but I have begun a migration to Mastodon. As long as Twitter is up, I’ll continue to post there, but I’ll also be posting to Mastodon in the meantime.

People are making Mastodon out to be a complicated social media platform and I totally get where that assertion comes from. Even I was confused at first. It’s not as simple as making an account on any other platform.

But it is simple. 

Just download the app and understand two things:

1. The server you pick doesn’t really matter.

It’s not like Reddit or Discord. You’re not going to get locked into a community of people. You can still follow whoever you want and see pretty much everyone’s tweets. 

It’s kind of like an email address in that it doesn’t matter if you have a Gmail, Hotmail, or Outlook. You’re still getting all the functionality that comes with email.

Each server has a different host that may have different community guidelines, but they’re all pretty basic (just don’t be an asshole). Some servers are more stable than others. Just pick a popular one and be done with it.

You can change your server at any time but there’s not really a point to doing so if your server is stable.

I picked @mastadon.world and it’s fine. It works.

2. Mastodon is like old school Twitter

If you had a Twitter account in the early days of the platform, you’ll know what I’m talking about. There’s no quote tweet functionionality. You have to hashtag things for it to show up in search or trend. There’s no “home” page - just a basic timeline with the latest posts.

It’s how Twitter used to be. Vanilla.

No algorithms pushing to you to certain content.

Frankly, I find it kind of refreshing.

NBA Mastodon:

These are all of the NBA Twitter personalities that have migrated to Mastodon. If you have an account or know someone from NBA Twitter on Mastodon, please let me know. I will update this list periodically.

Salman Ali - @salmanalinba@mastadon.world (me lol)

Howard Beck - @HowardBeck@journa.host

Sam Vecenie - @Sam_Vecenie@mastadon.social

John Schuhmann - @johnschuhmann@journa.host

Derek Bodner - @DerekBodner@journa.host

Rex Chapman - @rexchapman@sfba.social

Faizal Khamisa - @faizalkham@ohai.social

John Hollinger - @johnhollinger@journa.host

Eric Pincus - @EricPincus@newsie.social

Andrew Ungvari - @drewunga@newsie.social

The Knicks Wall - @TheKnicksWall@mastodon.world

Mike Finger - @mikefinger@mstdn.social

Morten Stig Jensen - @msjnba@journa.host