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Dec 15, 2023Liked by Paul Backhouse

Thanks for building this amazing stuff, Paul! 🙏 Loved it.

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Thank Nat, appreciate it.😊.

I reply here to your Mastodon DM re Nazi-notes-deluge, 'cos this missive is too long for a Mastodon DM!

Mastodon is sort of OK, there's no tracking and moderation is "light", but it can be quiet depending on which server hosts you. Federation was lauded in the beginning as the antidote to mega-centralised structures, but is also a problem, as propagation of your content across servers is not seamless. I'm on a bit of a backwater server, as Belgian maly.io was one of the few servers without a waiting list in the early heady days, so I took what was available.

Your mastodon.social server should be a popular and busy conmunity with other hosted users seeing your content, whereas users hosted on other servers will usually only see your content if they follow you across the federated boundary, with the exception that trending posts that have become popular with other users on your server may be made visible. That said I don't think you will have much difficulty establishing a growing follower community across servers.

For me Substack is definitely my first choice notwithstanding that I get crowded out by the big hitter monetizing authors! For me Substack is all about long form narratives enhanced by pics and vids. I'm not keen on notes or chat. I see "X" as a conduit to attract readers, although that has been an increasing problem, as I'm using more video which is unsupported by X as a clickable media asset. So Mastodon (for me on my server) is something of a side-show.

Hope this helps, Paul.ðŸĪ–ðŸĪ–🙂

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Dec 15, 2023Liked by Paul Backhouse

Thanks for this comprehensive answer, Paul! I just replied to you on Mastodon because I'm testing the visibility of the post.

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Thanks Nat I replied on Mastodon re AI. I suspect you may need to take the initiative and build a serious interest group as a "List". Thanks very much for the Share. I need all the help I can get. Robot fans here on Substack seem few and far between!ðŸĪ–ðŸĪ–🧐😅

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Dec 15, 2023Liked by Paul Backhouse

The biggest mistake I've made was deleting myself from social platforms. Don't make the same mistake. I killed my blog. Have you seen the video I shared on Mastodon? Wild growth, rave reviews. Now? It's been more than 3 weeks, it's dead.

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Thanks Nat yes I saw the video. Strangely Mastodon on my server claims the vid isn't available but if I click the message it plays OK Might be due to separation of servers. Others may be put off - if access isn't completely easy they move on.

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*thanks Nat*ðŸĪŠ

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