Chris Trottier on Nostr: Here’s why Akkoma is my favorite social media platform and why I love it ...

Here’s why Akkoma is my favorite social media platform and why I love it substantially more than Mastodon, Blue Sky, or Threads.

## Number one: A default 5,000-character limit.

Not a 120-character limit, not a 300-character limit, not 500—it’s five thousand. This gives me a lot to work with. It lets me make detailed, nuanced posts with lots of information.

Some people will say, “Well, if you’re using 5,000 characters, it’s no longer microblogging.” And you know what? You’re right—it’s not. It’s blogging. And as it turns out, I prefer blogging over microblogging because I have a lot to say.

Now, could I split up my thoughts into a big, long thread on Mastodon, Blue Sky, or Threads? Sure, I could, and I’d probably get a lot of engagement from that. But it’s also a lot of work. It takes just as much effort to split a post into 20 smaller posts as it does to just write out my basic thought in one go. So why not just put all the information in one post? It makes things a lot easier for me, and I suspect it might even make things easier for you when you’re scrolling through your timeline.

## Reason two: The user interface.

Akkoma has a lot of different interfaces. I personally use one called Mangan, which feels very much like old-school Twitter. But overall, Akkoma’s interface across the board is more like a microblogging platform than a blogging one.

I’ve never liked the UI on WordPress, Blogger, Medium, or Substack. They’re always very design-oriented, made for people who want everything to look perfect. But what I want is something that displays text well, with maybe a few pictures at the bottom of the post. That’s it. The number one thing I liked about old-school Twitter was the interface, so why not use that same interface for long-form content? It’s easier on the eyes, more streamlined, and gets rid of all the fluff.

## Reason three: Markdown.

Like I said, I don’t need everything to look perfect. But I do like some formatting—bold text, italics, headings, things like that. It adds nuance. It tells people which words are important in a paragraph.

Sometimes, if I have a long post, I like to split things up to make it easier to read. Sometimes I like to use bullets. And sometimes, just for fun, I might want to do a strikethrough to be funny. I’m not asking for the world here. I’m not asking for flashing text or embossing. I’m just asking for basic formatting, and Akkoma gives me that.

## Reason four: Emoji reactions.

One thing that’s always bugged me about most microblogging platforms is that you can only like something. But what if I don’t want to like it? What if it makes me angry? Or sad? Or disgusted? Sometimes I don’t want to write a whole comment saying I’m disgusted. Sometimes I just want to use an emoji.

Akkoma lets me do that. It gives me the ability to not just like something but also to be angry, sad, or disgusted. I can display the full range of reactions I have when I encounter a post.

## Reason five: Quoted boosts (or what they used to call retweets on Twitter).

If you’re on Threads or Blue Sky, you have this feature. But if you’re on Mastodon, you don’t. And most Mastodon users would yell bloody murder if quoted boosts were added. I’m not going to get into the politics of that, but here’s the thing: the rest of the Fediverse doesn’t have to follow Mastodon’s lead.

You can do quoted boosts on Misskey. You can do them on Friendica. And you can definitely do them on Akkoma. And to be frank, I use quoted boosts every single day. Most Mastodon users don’t even know that quoted boosts are a thing on the Fediverse because they’ve only used Mastodon.

Now, some people on Mastodon might get very angry about this. The orthodox view on Mastodon is that quoted boosts are somehow abusive. But let me tell you something: I’ve been using quoted boosts for years. I’ve managed communities that have access to quoted boosts. Nobody has ever complained. I’ve never seen a massive problem with quoted boosts, either on my servers or on anyone else’s.

So a lot of this panic over quoted boosts is, in my opinion, much ado about nothing. Does that mean Mastodon should add quoted boosts? That’s really up to the developers. But if quoted boosts are critical for your social media usage, the Fediverse has options for that, such as Akkoma.

## Final thoughts:

There are plenty of reasons to love Akkoma, many of which I haven’t even touched on here. From an admin perspective, it’s low-resource, easy to manage, and great for moderation. But for regular users, these five features—character limits, UI, Markdown, emoji reactions, and quoted boosts—are more than enough to make Akkoma stand out.