It says a lot that people look at Mastodon (or other fedi apps) and say “this does not 1:1 work like Twitter” and do not take the time to try it out or read a little on what the differences are. Yes, it is different.

@yatil TBH, I was like that when I first started working with Manton, right after Micro.blog was launched. I was asking him for likes and retweets, which were obviously missing and he must have forgotten them! 😅 That's how I came to write my guide to Micro.blog for Twitter users.

(I'm taking notes now for a Mastodon for Micro.blog users guide, as well as a guide Micro.blog for Mastodon users.)

@jean I still would sometimes like a “retweet” feature, embedding is nice, but also a bit cumbersome. But that might just be muscle memory. Thanks for all your work, I really appreciate it. This explainers are very important.

@yatil @jean micro∙blog does have likes, called bookmarks. The difference is that bookmarks aren’t public, so there’s no addicting zero-sum game for more bookmarks, or the like. But I guess you already knew all that. 🤷‍♂️

@renevanbelzen @jean Yes ;-) Bookmarks work pretty much like Twitter bookmarks instead of likes. I am ok without likes, but sometimes it would be nice to have a quick way to “acknowledge” a micro.blog entry without a full reply.

@yatil Having read a blog post is already acknowledgment, even though there’s no signal back. It isn’t needed. The author assumes that all readers enjoy the post in some way, otherwise they wouldn’t read it, would they?

@renevanbelzen Good that that works for you. I would like to have a friendly nod into an authors’ direction from time to time. I understand and agree why it is not here, but still, it is a social interaction that I like. Maybe I create a user script with a non-working like button just so that I can feel I have done something. 😂

@sod Good points!

Still, disagreeing with a post doesn’t mean you dislike it. Disliking a post often mean for me to ignore it. Life’s too short to spend on negative feelings and rage-reading.

This is why I no longer watch the news. Haven’t for 20 years. It promotes the idea that the only news is bad news, since people are alike in happiness, yet differ in sadness and grief, which is more interesting as a spectacle.

Well, I’m not really interested in other people’s misfortune for entertainment value.

But that’s just silly old me.

@jean That's a great idea. I'm seeing users confused by the multiple servers/instances of Mastodon. One very smart user compared the system to email I'm on Apple mail, but can send email to and receive email from people usong Gmsl or private domain mail etc. Also seeing users confused about following someone on a different server/instance, and the need to copy and paste the entire user address.

@renevanbelzen Well said. I’ve been thinking about this lately too.