Erin Kissane’s Blue skies over Mastodon post has been linked to like freakin’ everywhere over the last day or so, so I’m not going to spend too to much time chewing over the things that everyone else is saying about it. But largely, I feel the same way about almost everything she says, like how she feels about Bluesky:

…I’m also not really posting because it’s a chaos machine and it’s still way too early for me to know if I really want to contribute there.

But the parts that had me nodding along the most are the bits about how it seems like the first rule of Mastodon is that you don’t criticize Mastodon. The inevitable pile-on that happens if someone dares critique or question the platform. The passive-aggressive—and sometimes agrressive-agressive—responses don’t do anything to push the platform forward as a viable alternative to centralized social media. Before you getting all wound up and start lecturing people about how quote posts can be used for dunking on people or how search can be used to enable harassment, maybe take a look at how your responses are creating a(n un)welcoming environment for others, or not.

For the record, I do like Mastodon and I don’t have as many problems with the UI and onboarding, etc, etc as many others do (although I do see their points). Eugene Rochko and the rest of the Mastodon devs are taking steps to address some of the more frequently-encountered and glaring UX problems people are encountering, which is great, but in the meantime, helping people onboard and get used to the way Mastodon works would seem to be a more productive course of action than getting all shouty, no?