Give Mastodon a try to replace Twitter/Tumblr...

[hole4nut]

...if you don’t mind a little more complexity in how things work.

Mastondon is what is referred to as a decentralized social network. Simply put, it means that rather than some company like Twitter or Tumblr 1) having unfettered access and use of your data and 2) having content policies that are overly prohibitive to porn and underfunctioning in their response to online harassment, users or groups of users now have the ability to run their own servers for their common interests, and all of the servers communicate via a shared protocol (or don’t communicate if you want to keep it a bit more private.

To get started, most people fine a Mastodon “instance” that allows the content they want to deal with, and the signs up directly with the server. For example, I registered with humblr.social. Regardless of what instance you sign up with, you can find my account by searching for my account name and instance name: @hole4nut@humblr.social

Your feed has a few options that shows you context based on either 1) who you follow, 2) who is on your instance, or 3) the entire “federated” Mastodon service. Otherwise, it kind of looks like Twitter.

There is no standard mobile app, but I recommend getting the Toot! app if you use iOS on Apple devices.

If there is interest, I can put together a more comprehensive guide to get you going .

[phukhole]

It's taken off quite a bit recently with the current twitter implosion.  There are a lot of people still using twitter, but a LOT of people are jumping ship and trying out mastodon.  It is a little different in that you have to sign up on a server and that they aren't all connected, but they ARE federated which means I can follow anyone on any server and get their updates.  So, setting up on different servers isn't a HUGE issue, but FINDING people is. Text of posts aren't searchable. but Hashtags are, so populating your profile with #BBBH or #bareback or #CumDump or #MAL2023 or #BreedingZone will help you find each other.  It reminds me a LOT of early web chat rooms and soc.motss - where there was EVERYTHING out there, you just had to know where to look.  Mastodon encourages CW (Content Warnings), image descriptions and sensitive content markers instead of outright banning porn or nudity.  Different servers will have different rules, but there are a number of LGBT and kink friendly ones out there.   Take a look if you're looking for a change from twitter.  I can be found @monqee@thicc.horse if you wanna hit me up on there too.

[kinky]

Years ago, I created an account on a Mastodon server called humblr.social. I posted some, followed some. Months later, when I went back to check it out again, it was nowhere to be found. The whole server just vanished without a trace. No warning, no word from admin, nothing. Because the server ceased to exist, you couldn't retrieve and migrate your account to a different server, in other words, all your content, posts, followers, and followings were gone too.

Years later, I decided to give Mastodon a second try, but this time around, I chose a more established server with a sizable user base that is less likely to disappear overnight like humblr.social did.

Who knows, maybe one day we'll have our own Mastodon server for the BZ community. While it's not free or as simple as starting a Discord or a Telegram group/channel, anyone can create their own Mastodon server. All you need is a domain name and a hosting provider with email capabilities.