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How many social network accounts should a person have?
So, first of all, people got *really* hung up on the word "should" here. I added the question to my poll FAQ: https://evanp.me/pollfaq/#should
So, on to number of accounts. First, I think the idea that each person should have one account per social network service is bullshit. I should be able to follow people on any social network from whatever account I currently use.
Second, it's also broken to have one social network account per type of content shared (images, video, audio, documents, ...). We've had social networks that can handle different kinds of content since the mid 2000s. Segmenting networks on content is also bullshit.
So, I lean toward having just one account. However, I recognize that with other communications media, like email, we tend to have a small number of accounts: one personal, one for work or school, then a couple of throwaways for dating or selling furniture on Craigslist. I think with the roles a person can have a small number, like 2-5, makes the most sense.
Some people suggested having different accounts for different topics you post about -- music, tech, family, etc. I think this is better handled with addressable lists (send this post to my close friends and family, this one to my electric car friends, this one to my Linux friends, ...). More generally, hashtags can manage this, too. So, I don't think you need different accounts for different topics, unless you need to be able to disavow any connection to the topic (e.g. political or sexual).
@evan For this, I'd do both. Right now, I have this account for "tech" posting, usually talking about my various creations, and another account for more personal, political, and generic posting (although much of that, I find, is slowly moving to Bluesky because it's more engaging to chat about my non-tech interests there). It gives me "separation of concerns," but also lets me private one account and keep the other public.
@evan hashtags don't work very well at preventing flooding friends' feeds with things they aren't interested in.
@lakelady Our friends need to be nicer and more supportive about things we are interested in.
That said, having addressable lists (Diaspora* aspects, Google+ circles, Facebook friend lists) means you can proactively select just a few people to share with.
@evan I don't believe in dictating how my friends should behave. I try to follow the golden rule . . . I don't like to have my feed flooded so I try not to flood the feed of others
I find creating, curating, and selecting lists takes much more time than simply having separate accounts.
@evan This is the exact use case for why I set up this account. It turned out, the thousand or so followers on my "main" account aren't interested in esoteric posts about Tottenham Hotspur, and with there being no algorithm, I felt it better to create a separate account I could post "freely" on.
Using (guppe) groups works quite well when added to a list and excluded from main timeline. Can't add hashtags to lists, though.
Would love smthg like the old Google+ Circles if you remember those?
@evan I also quite like the idea of hashtag contexts. So you switch into, say, gardening context and all your posts have a user-defined set of hashtags automatically added until you switch context again. Very useful for current events (e.g. a sports match) in particular where it is easy to forget to add your hashtags.
@hallenbeck @evan I've been wanting something like this ever since I joined Fedi.
I've been begging third party app makers for a "Hashtag Drawer" where I could save a group of hashtags or even individual hashtags to the composer for easy re-use.
Your suggestion seems very close to that.
@cheeaun how difficult would it be to implement something like hashtag contexts to a client like @phanpy ?
So 99% of my posts have #COYS #FediFC at the bottom as footer tags (so they render in the footer in the Mastodon client). On matchdays, we often add an additional, e.g. #TOTLEI to group the specific match. It's a bind adding these manually to every post. A template or context feature would be wonderful!
@evan I love your approach in this thread. That‘d be the dealbreaker to fix social. Funfact: I suggested your idea of posting into channels in private discussions with a bunch of social media nerds in the early days of Twitter. I‘m still with you, the idea is charming.
@evan
"Addressable lists" is exactly the functionality that LiveJournal used to have: you could put contacts on a list and mark your posts to be viewable only to a specific list.
So you could make things be only visible to family, or only visible to people you were out to, not the general public, or only the people who shared your special interest.
Anyone else didn't see a hidden post, didn't see any clue at all that the post existed.