Simplenote is good software. It’s a very simple cross-platform note taker with excellent cloud synchronization between devices. It’s perfect for drafting a few paragraphs of text, keeping a simple to do list, or jotting down an address while you’re on the phone. Under the hood it’s got some remarkably sophisticated features like version history, note sharing, etc. But all that is out of the way if you just want a box to type in.

Simplenote is free software, a gift from the folks at Automattic. They’re mostly known for WordPress but they have a surprising number of other public good services they run, mostly for free or with value-add purchases. Akismet, Longreads, Gravatar, Cloudup; I had no idea these were all Automattic. Good for them.

Twitter has been in the middle of a shitstorm for awhile now, users and the media upset about abuse, trolls, propaganda, etc. They’re now working on a short timeline to curb abuse. It’s not going very well. Yesterday Twitter verified Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Nazi rally in August. The rally that ended up with Heather Heyer being murdered. Kessler gloated about her death on Twitter.

Yes, Twitter endorsed an actual Nazi.

Make no mistake; when Twitter puts the blue check on an account they are endorsing it. They are endorsing that person’s identity is verified. They are endorsing that the person is newsworthy. They now acknowledge the endorsement.

Verified users aren’t just endorsed, they are enabled. My understanding is verified users get extra tools when they use the site. They get a priority user support experience. And it appears that verified users get ranked higher when Twitter decides which tweets to show, particularly replies to public tweets. So Twitter hasn’t just endorsed an actual Nazi, they’ve gone out of their way to enable his speech too.

I want nothing to do with a company like that. I rage quit this week. I’ll probably end up back at some point because I’ll miss it too much, but right now I’m furious.

I’m generally a strong free speech advocate. Twitter was founded on principles of strong free speech. But when we worked on it in the early days we neglected to consider how powerful a free speech tool is in the hands of monstrous people. Demagogues use Twitter incredibly effectively. Propaganda and lies spread faster than truth. Abusers hound their victims into silence. Free speech only works if there are curbs on its abuse. Twitter has failed to do that.

I’m using Mastodon regularly now, I’m @nelson@lgbt.io. Add me!

Mastodon is a Twitter-like social media that the cool kids started using back in April. At first blush it’s just like Twitter. You post messages about your breakfast, you follow other people to see their cat pictures, and you get a little dopamine rush from social engagement. Also maybe you share things of personal or public interest and help build an important online culture. The UI isn’t as polished and it doesn’t have as many features as Twitter, but it’s good.

If you want to start using Mastodon this beginner’s guide or the Join Mastodon site are good places to start. The key thing is you have to pick an instance to sign up on. This tool helps find instances or you can just pick the biggest instance. I picked lgbt.io because I like the idea of an LGBT identity.

Once you join you need to find people to follow. The best tool I’ve found for that is the Twitter/Mastodon bridge which helps you find your Twitter friends on Mastodon. It requires both sides opt-in and the UI is a little awkward. I also followed a lot of people from Metafilter.

I don’t like the default multi-column web UI. I’m using this one column layout instead but it’s not particularly easy to install. Halcyon is an alternate Mastodon web client that is a Twitter UI clone; you can use it with any Mastodon account. For iPhone apps people recommend Amaroq.

So why Mastodon? For me it’s because I’m angry with Twitter’s endorsement of Nazis and want an alternative. Also it’s fun to try something new. The big drawback is very little of my community is there. But maybe it’ll grow! Also it’s good that Mastodon is a different community than Twitter; the goal is to not replicate all the awful community mistakes Twitter made. Hopefully the abusers and Nazis and insane presidents will never join Mastodon or at least will be filtered out somehow.

The big technical difference with Mastodon is it is federated; instead of one single Mastodon server there’s separate instances that communicate with each other. For casual use the federation doesn’t matter since most everyone can talk to everyone else across instances. But in theory it allows for diverse communities with different standards. Also possibly some interesting scaling properties. I’m a little skeptical about how this will work as Mastodon grows, I don’t know that they have any magic solution to Internet abuse. But I’m excited to see someone trying something new.