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📣 BlenderNation and Blender Artists Twitter Feeds at Risk

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I'm resurfacing this article as it looks like Twitter will remove free access from their APIs tomorrow. BlenderNation and Blender Artists rely on these APIs to publish our news there. If you follow us or Blender Artists on Twitter, I highly recommend you start following us on Mastodon, where we do not face such restrictions.

Now that Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, users are abandoning ship. Many of them (including me) have decided to switch to Mastodon instead. Unlike other social media, Mastodon is open and federated (everyone can run their own server and link it up to the bigger network), and no company is in charge, or spying on your behavior. If you're on Mastodon, you can now also receive BlenderNation and Blender Artists updates there

I launched the Blender Artists channel on Mastodon.art yesterday - you can follow us on @[email protected] to receive our daily Featured art picks.

The @[email protected] account has been active for longer - it has been maintained for some time now by community member jeancf, and we're talking to him to turn it into our official channel.

Enjoy!

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

26 Comments

  1. You're abandoning the users that follow you because of a change of executive that hasn't changed anything about what you can post?

    It's a free world and you're free to do so, but you're leaving people that enjoyed your content enough to follow you for selfish reasons.

    And isn't Trump's social network built on top of mastodon too?

      • Why was there no shift when Jack Dorsey gave the company to Parag Agrawal? There's only an uproar after Elon Musk bought it for some reason.

        This is very puzzling, I thought certain that people employed to use software and tech would have found this the change in leadership the most appealing since it's creation.

        • I think this whole discussion could have been avoided if you just said, here's a new place that you can also see blender nation and blender artists. Instead of making it about Elon.

  2. Good Job, BlenderKit is there too now! see you there.
    As others stated their worries, it's really not about leaving, but being on a new growing platform too. Social networks come and go,

  3. Open source all communication.

    People should be able to exchange ideas without anyone getting in the way, whether 3D or any other kind.

    I don't do social media in any form, to be clear, as I never trust large, centralized entities

  4. Morten Fjellheim on

    Hey guys, remember this is not a place to discuss politics. As Bart have stated, the move does not include "moving" away from Twitter, it is to be available for users on both playforms. Lets not make this into a discusion on wether the right or left is correct. I too have an opinion on that, and i my fingers is itching to join the discusion. But let us take that somewhere else!!

    • Not sure this is even a move that favors any particular political leaning in life, since people all across whatever gamut you can think of all have their reasons for not warming up to Elon "Citizen Kane" Musk doing all what he's doing.

      But I agree. Folks should stop looking for debates all the time. It's not healthy.

  5. I'm glad for this new option. Thankful, really.

    Due to auto-moderation and a simple misunderstanding, my Twitter account got permanently banned and they won't let me make another account.

    It's forced me to move to Mastodon, and while it's a bit...unusual, I've grown rather accustomed to it.

    I'll look forward to joining BlenderNation on Mastodon!

    Also, don't look for fights, folks. It presents our community with an unwelcoming, divisive vibe. Bart's free to briefly state part of his purpose for offering this new route for hosting a BlenderNation following.

    I think Bart has long proven by now that he's always done what he feels towards this community's best interest, short-term and long-term, and this BlenderNation ship is his baby to steer, to begin with. Who are we to question his decision?

    You won't change anyone's mind on the matter, anyways, so why poke at it? Just accept the new Mastodon option as available and realize that the Twitter option is still available. Adding the new network option here is positive.

  6. Boy I can't believe the level of hate here for a simple social media policy change. Stick to your guns Bart, you should be able to change policy without having to endure so much whining and judgement. You run a great site, keep up the great work.

  7. Daniel Oakfield on

    I wish I had an invite to mastodon.art... also considering joining mastodon.social
    The future is not on Twitter, is better to start in new venues.

    Bart, try to ignore the people judging your action!

  8. Makes sense Bart - I started to move away from Twitter myself simply because of stability and future scalability reason.

    LinkedIn is well a much better replacement.

    With Mastodon you also can run it yourself and are not victim to what Twitter will do.

    I do think Twitter is too big to fail - but the API changes are significant.

  9. BN costs time and money to maintain and run, something for which I am cognizant of and grateful for.

    This is your time. Your money.

    BN represents the primary form by which I find paid content for Blender that I purchase.

    Twitter initiating a pay-money-to-continue-business-as-usual ultimately means BN would have to pay out of pocket to the ex-richest person in the world, which inevitably means less time and effort is spent towards BN doing the thing that BN wants to do, furthermore, at the ill-conceived whims of the world's ex-richest man.

    I can understand the decision to add options to your social media engagement. It's just pure capitalism at play, after all.

    We're cheering for you.

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