It sounds as though there’s a lot more to these new setups than I had initially thought, this might take a bit of reading just to pin down the basics. Thanks for the detailed response, much appreciated, those links are going to come in handy.

Interesting, I’ll keep it in mind.

Quick question for you. I signed up to Mastadon a while back, have been endeavouring to use it more regularly, and have been trying to sign on to as many local or often-subscribed orgs (on other media platforms). What I’m finding is that remarkably few of them are on Mastadon, and often those that are have been using them as a kind of alt-Twitter content splash with little engagement.

Are the actual active profiles/communities sort of walling themselves off from bots and bad actors in the way that you’re describing? Invite-only groups whose activity isn’t seen by non-members, or even accessible when searching for related tags/topics? Have I been casting about looking for content like someone looking for people in a neighbourhood where everyone is inside with the curtains drawn, or is there actually low engagement on Mastadon overall?

I’ve been using it for what seems like forever, but getting fewer and fewer relevant results over time for some reason. Switching to &udm=14 has been helpful, but I’m still uncertain about it: https://udm14.com/

Am I mistaken in saying that the new Reddit/Lemmy format of forum is to message boards, as message boards was to BBS?

RIP D&D campaign’s chat service 😬

Oh yeah, damn. Was this close

I wonder if they’ll be throwing people out of helicopters over Superior or James Bay?

Be careful how big a slice you eat then, lest you be visited by the ghost of Walter Brimley 👻

A valiant effort, but how does it taste?