New Mastodon Instances and a Local Timeline Experiment

I’ve been tempted to join a smaller Mastodon instance to be able to appreciate the value of having a useful local timeline. Mastodon.social is so large as to have a generally un-useful local timeline because I lack the context of all the users and its generally very hit-and-miss for my discovery and serendipity needs. It’s not like I really spent a lot of time sipping from Twitter’s firehose timeline, which is a rough equivalent.

I almost jumped yesterday when Jim Groom and the Reclaim Hosting spun up a Mastodon instance focused on DS 106 at https://social.ds106.us/about. I’ve followed a large part of that community for over a decade, but didn’t have the bandwidth.

This morning I noticed that Boris Mann and gang have spun up a Mastodon instance around the idea of tools for thought which dovetails with their efforts at Tools for Thought Rocks! So I’m going to bite there to see what happens and have the experience of a smaller specific and focused timeline to watch.

I still have to figure out how to best dovetail the experience into my own IndieWeb site given potential limitations with backfeed of POSSE posts from Brid.gy. Perhaps I’ll just use it as read only to start and simply federate my content there? We’ll see. It’s solely an experiment, but some of those few already there are people I see regularly. No guarantees on how much I’ll post there, but if it’s your favorite reader/platform you can find me at @chrisaldrich@toolsforthought.rocks. Most likely anything I post to it will be more relevant to thinking.

As ever, following me directly via my own site is the best way to ensure you’re getting the best of everything.

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Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

5 thoughts on “New Mastodon Instances and a Local Timeline Experiment”

  1. I’ve been enjoying the idea of the local timeline so much and indieweb.social’s is a nice medium-speed stream. I may start joining other instances for a variety of community-specific experiences.

    It’d be fun to find #book and #music focused communities to hang out with.

    I’ve also been thinking of spinning up my own instance, but it may lose some of the magic when discovery via community isn’t there.
    Published
    Saturday, Nov 12 at 16:55

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  4. Posts listing places to land on Mastodon and elsewhere: “many of the philosophers and other academics joining Mastodon appear to be doing so through the zirk.us server”. Also”: Mastodon instances for journalists. Chris Aldrich on new Mastodon instances and a timeline experiment. Muguel Guhlin lists education-friendly Masstodon instances, mostly for the K-12 sector, and also a meta-list of lists including servers at MIT, OERu, and Raspberry Pi. Also, Internet Archive announces a new server. Hendrik Erz offers a long list of academic groups, lists, bots and servers on Mastodon. A new instance specifically for Canadians has been announced. There’s an Open Education Global (OEG) Fediverse Directory.

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