I kind of miss social media, but I am simultaneously pleased to no longer be consuming or posting on both Twitter and Instagram. There was a time when I frequently shared my thoughts on Twitter, but my activity decreased notably after Musk’s acquisition of the platform. When the layoffs started, I stopped tweeting and removed the Twitter app from my phone.

Mastodon Vs Lemmy Stable Diffusion

Long-term results of whatever I happen to be doing will wind up on my blog. Daily progress on things used to land on Twitter. My random jibber-jabber and links to key tweets, usually with photos or video, would wind up on Discord. Now I just upload those photos and videos directly to Discord.

Lost in this transition is the middle ground that sat between my blog and Discord. Discord is an acceptable place to post shorter content, but chat is so ephemeral. Any conversation held on Discord two days ago is nearly as forgotten as if it had taken place two years ago. Essentially, that content disappears into the ether.

Can I fill that void with a federated service? Of course I can. There is a much more important question to ask. Should I fill that void with a federated social media service, and which one should I choose?!

The obvious choice seemed like Mastodon

Mastodon is designed to function as an alternative to Twitter. It follows the same structure of tweets, replies, and retweets, except it calls them toots, replies, and retoots. The presentation of content closely resembles that of Twitter, with the notable difference that there are no advertisements or algorithm-driven distractions occupying any part of the interface.

Mastodon is missing a key ingredient. On a daily basis, hundreds of millions of individuals engage with Twitter. There’s always room to grow your audience. There’s a possibility that content I share on Twitter, which holds intrigue, could reach hundreds of thousands of viewers. This level of exposure is highly improbable on Mastodon.

It may not matter than Mastodon has fewer active users. The average Mastodon user is likely to be much more active and knowledgeable than the average Twitter user. Are they active enough to make up for their small numbers? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

I started using my Twitter account around the time when my blog was near its highest point in terms of traffic from Google search. I didn’t like the idea that all my eggs were in Google’s basket. I was hoping to get some additional traffic from Twitter. However, despite years of posting and growing my follower count, the visits to my blog generated from Twitter amounted to less than one percent of my overall page views.

Replacing Twitter with a smaller Twitter doesn’t feel like the correct move.

Lemmy would be an even better fit for us!

While Mastodon is meant to be a Twitter replacement, Lemmy is meant to be a self-hosted replacement for Reddit. Reddit doesn’t exactly feel like a replacement for Twitter, but I think something Reddit-like would be a much better fit for our community. Such a platform would be likely to help scratch the same itch for me as Twitter once did.

We have considered setting up a forum like Discourse before. Lemmy positions itself as a link aggregator like Reddit or Hacker News, yet it could equally serve as a suitable solution for our forum requirements. Half of what I use Twitter for is posting and consuming links to cool and useful content. Lemmy would do a good job here!

Lemmy would be a good place for us to keep track of hardware deals on Amazon. We could have sticky posts with lists of the NVMe and SSD drives with good prices and performance. Maybe some of this would go in the sidebar.

While a wiki would most definitely be better suited for this particular task, I’d rather avoid the necessity of overseeing multiple distinct services.

My sole issue I have with Lemmy

I have one complain regarding Lemmy, and it isn’t a big problem. Lemmy has integrated image uploading and hostiny, but it doesn’t have video hosting.

There are two reasons that I still have a Twitter account. One reason is my spinning-head avatar. The other is that I have tweets with video and photos embedded all over my blog. It would be nice if the Butter, What?! community’s social media platform would allow me to substitute all those embedded tweets with embedded toots or Lemmy posts.

This is not a deal breaker, and solutions to this problem do exist.

I overused AI while writing this blog, and I am committing 100% to the AI rephrasing choices for this section!

I’ve been pondering whether I should utilize ChatGPT to assist me in composing my blog posts. Can it aid me in paraphrasing sentences and passages? Can it serve as a catalyst to overcome writer’s block? Can it inspire me to formulate paragraphs that I wouldn’t have conceived independently?

I fed each paragraph into ChatGPT and tasked it with rephrasing them. A significant portion of the output sounded somewhat pompous, but I did find merit in some of its suggestions. I ensured that I incorporated at least one of the rephrased paragraphs within each section, and I introduced at least minor alterations to each paragraph based on its recommendations.

What are your impressions on this approach?

Members of the Butter, What?! community! What do you think?!

I possess the necessary hardware and bandwidth available to stand up both Mastodon and Lemmy. I don’t want to commit myself to the hours it will take to maintain both over the long term.

In fact, I am not entirely convinced that I should be spending the time keeping either up and running! While standing up a Lemmy server will be easy, the ongoing task of keeping it up to date poses a greater challenge. I don’t want our Lemmy server to die of neglect.

What do you think? I am curious about your perspective on this! Do you think we need a less ephemeral platform to augment our Discord server? Is Lemmy the right choice, in your view? Don’t hesitate to join the conversation by sharing your thoughts in the comments or by connecting with me on Discord for an engaging discussion!