I’m saying they are getting IF news they would never find anywhere else. It helps outreach, which brings more people in our orbit, which creates more games, events, and projects for all of us down the road.
I’m not as concerned about my feed; I simply follow who I want to hear from.
You are lucky to have already found everyone who might know something worthwhile 
If it is your experience that people find and join servers before searching for hashtags, that is interesting to me. I don’t know enough to agree or disagree. Anecdotally, I think at least half of my followers found me through the #interactivefiction hashtag. There are only a handful of people using it, surprisingly, which must make us easy to find. Not that I have a huge number of followers!
Nevertheless, I understand the appeal of familiar and reliable standards and tech. I’m sure many people will be interested.
For me it was the thing that made it easiest for me to sign up and figure out Mastodon. It cut out the choice paralysis of researching servers and I was comfortable hopping in on the local level with people I talk with already first to get my feet wet. I don’t think it has to be a “discoverable place for IF people.” It can be a resource for whoever is here.
The cool thing about Mastodon is you can get your feet wet in what amounts to a tutorial village with people you know without you tooting (or whatever) to the entire gosh darn world yet, and then you reach out and find other content outside that when you’re ready to curate your own special social media/miniblog feed.
I don’t think the relevance of this can be overstated. With Mastodon, your server admins’ prudent moderation ends up determining whether or not you get chopped off from parts of the fediverse. And things operated by an individual automatically have a single point of failure. Going with a server that has a team with well-defined moderation and governance policies is important. (One of my accounts will definitely jump ship at such time as the IFTF stands up a server.)
You mean censorship, right?
I left Twitter years ago, when I realised that certain voices in UK politics were blocked from my feed.
Now suddenly that Twitter filtering has become inadequate so we all have to move elsewhere?
Please, am I being naive? Explain it to me.
This forum has well-defined moderation and governance policies. You can read them here: FAQ/Guidelines/Code of Conduct
If IFTF runs a Mastodon server, it will have similar policies.
I mean since the IFTF isn’t a state actor not really? If you mean to say that any form of moderation necessarily infringes on some speech, sort of but that’s a feature, not a bug, since at least in the US context freedom of association is a core part of our speech-related values. And the theory would be that the community that’s familiar with the norms and practices here would likely also like to see the same norms and practices support a social media community on Mastodon - one of the selling points of the federal model it uses is that folks can move around to find a place they like, rather than being stuck with whatever the dude who owns Twitter wants the experience to be.
Anyway here’s the more granular explanation:
Thanks for the reply. I find it strange that a community focused on works of text would be so opaque in declaring what it is permissible to say.
The very first post on this thread says this:
Well, I have failed to guess them.
Please state the nature of the emergency.
I’m not an avid Twitter user, but speaking anecdotally I’ve certainly noticed that the site’s stability is degrading, they’re putting security features behind a paywall, they’re tweaking the algorithm specifically to run up Musk’s numbers, and there are more Nazis and racists getting their racist Nazi stuff in front of people who really don’t want to see it. So can’t speak for Victor but I suspect that’s much of the context (I think he might have been circumspect because there was a contentious thread about these topics a few months ago so dredging things up again might have been a distraction. At least that’s a fear I have, so I won’t be posting again. Cheers!)
Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your prompt and honest reply.
So, Zork Social is in transition to a new owner. I apologize for the current down time!
After newly going onto Bluesky (@vivdunstan) I jotted down some quick preliminary thoughts on different social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Dreamwidth, Livejournal, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram). This may later be expanded to a more formal post on my “Viv’s Academic Blog” - it would update a similar article there years ago.
Mastodon is my favourite social network - other than here! - for IF types though. I find more of them there than on the other places. So it’s a really important place for me for that. Whereas other places have other strengths for different aspects of me.
Is there still a plan for the IFTF to host a Mastodon instance?
In case that’s still being considered, and IFTF peeps are gauging interest via this thread, I’ll say that I’ve been waiting for an IFTF instance to set up an account so would be excited if that moved ahead.
(Of course, I’d also have one more avenue for time-wasting, so maybe it’s better if it didn’t).
I have made an account on Threads and pulled the plug on my Twitter account last week. I’ve been mainly grousing about politics on Threads since there doesn’t seem to be any organized IF activity on there. I’ve got an idling Mastodon account on dosgame.club but haven’t been frequenting there. I would definitely also check into an IFTF server if it were available, but I’ve mainly fallen out of actively microblogging and am mostly read-only during down-time at work.
Given that the idea has been floating for most of a year, I’d say it would be unwise to wait for near-term action.
There is still a plan but I keep sweeping it behind other plans.
Well Mike, meet us at mastodon.gamedev.place 
I’d recommend setting up somewhere else sooner rather than wait. You can move your Mastodon account from one instance (server thingy) to another easily in future. So if there is an IFTF one that would be great and easy for you to switch to. But it would be lovely to see you on Mastodon. The IF community is growing there.
The biggest problem for me with Threads is that it’s not available currently to people in the EU. I’m in the UK, so can access it, but people in the EU can’t access it. So many of my Twitter network are mainland European folks, especially fellow academic historians. I’m also frustrated by Threads having limited search facilities. But I do peek in from time to time.
It’s great that instance is there. But IF types can sign up for any instance, and network using hashtags, following people etc. It can feel like you have to pick the “right” one instance. But really it’s a much more flexible system than it can appear. My Mastodon toots are quite varied and I’m on a Scotland-specific instance. But still interact across the Fediverse with people on other instances. Including IF types.