Re last boost: I'm interested in these concerns as part of my project to only maintain a presence on good social media sites, & to starve bad sites of content. Problem is, most sites will be imperfect, so it's tough to categorize them as good or bad. Twitter is a politically horrifying corporate mess, but I've always disliked how Mastodon leaves its users far *more* vulnerable to harassment in certain ways, just as described. For now, I'm not moving from Mastodon to Twitter just yet, but Cass's article is an important data point in decisions of this kind.
In re, Masto birdsite fork
@frameacloud FWIW, I just deleted the official Twitter app from my phone last week and migrated fully to third-party client software. I cannot deal with Twitter’s ads or algorithmic timeline, so having both filtered from my feed is a huge bonus. It’s also nice to be able to take control over blocking and filtering at the client level.
Unfortunately, abuse scenarios have caused me to pull way back from posting on either platform. Still sorting that out.
In re, Masto birdsite fork
@frameacloud I’m not sure if the extreme amounts of tribalism both platforms are experiencing are a sign of the times, an untenable privacy landscape, or sweeping popularity of social media in general. But, it factors into how I approach using each platform.
Agency over my private data has become chiefly important until there are better ways to mitigate dox-and-mob scenarios. To that end, and to my surprise, Twitter still has the better tooling.