About 2 months ago I unceremoniously shut down the Mastodon server at www.superstork.org.
I shut down this Mastodon server primarily because nobody was using it. It had no real energy.
I am a fan of Mastodon and I owe Mastodon gratitude for bringing a large amount of energy and life to the fediverse.
I initially set it up at the suggestion of somebody in superstonk, somebody who had concerns about reddit and that subreddit, and I shared those concerns. I had heard of Mastodon, and looked into it, and looked into the fediverse, and immediately I was intrigued, and I was motivated, so I spun up a Mastodon server.
But, evidently, Mastodon is simply not a valid replacement for superstonk / reddit, considering that it is a Twitter clone. It was never meant to be a discussion board. But, at that time, I hadn’t even heard of Lemmy, I never gave it much thought at all. At that time, Mastodon was the hotness. Elon Musk had just finalized the purchase of Twitter, and many people had issues with this, and they left and joined Mastodon. This can be seen in usage statistics, such as can be found at: https://fediverse.observer/stats.
But, much has changed over the last year. Eventually, this Lemmy instance came to life, and I have been using it ever since. The Lemmy experience is obviously the appropriate Reddit alternative and not Mastodon.
superstork.org now redirects to gmehydra.org, which lists this Lemmy instance as the one and only current fediverse instance for GME investors.
I think originally I was expecting a bit more enthusiasm towards the fediverse, I expected other people to be as interested in it as I was, but I have learned that people can be very hard to motivate. This is why I put together gmehydra.org, because I was hoping for a large collection of fediverse servers, but they simply never came (yet).
Most people have a tendency, I think, to not want to be the ones to “risk” their personal time and energy as an early adopter of a new idea. Let other people spend their time and energy and figure it out and give it some life, and then once it has some life, maybe then it would be attractive enough to go join.
So, for obvious reasons, Lemmy is the superior practical app compared to Mastodon, for the purposes of GME investors having a place where long form discussions can be had.
Also, side note, I am happy to be moving away from any kind of name that in any way is similar to or might be thought to be associated with “superstonk”.
Initially, I grabbed the name superstork because I thought it was kind of a fun and unserious play on the name superstonk. One kind Redditor had previously purchased the domain superstonk.net, and kindly offered to give that domain name to me for my Mastodon purposes. I respectfully declined the offer at that time, as I did not want to be seen trying to take or co-opt the name superstonk for my own purposes, I didn’t feel comfortable with it.
Now, a year later, I don’t want to have anything at all to do with that “brand”. Even if I had wanted to keep the Mastodon instance running, I wasn’t really happy with the domain that I had, it was too similar.
As we move forward I still expect that the fediverse will continue to grow, and eventually there will be additional instances for the purposes of GME investors, or at least instances that share common purposes.
As for right now, this instance is one of my favorite places in the social media landscape for discussing GME and other related information.
I think originally I was expecting a bit more enthusiasm towards the fediverse, I expected other people to be as interested in it as I was, but I have learned that people can be very hard to motivate.
I hear you on this one, Jersan! It’s tough to pack up shop and change to a whole other platform. If the DRS team hadn’t been ousted by Reddit and forced to find an alternative, we would likely still be there.
Lemmy has a long way to grow, but we’ll get there - and get there on the power of community. No advertisers, no profit, just people running instances and talking to each other. This instance has seen steadily increasing activity and user presence, and some of the memes posted here about general economic distress are reaching top pages on larger instances like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml - which will draw users back to our niche, and help people learn the truth about ownership.
somebody who had concerns about reddit and that subreddit, and I shared those concerns. I had heard of Mastodon, and looked into it, and looked into the fediverse, and immediately I was intrigued, and I was motivated, so I spun up a Mastodon server.
I appreciate your proactivity in mitigating censorship by migrating to the fediverse!