I was excited when I first heard of Gander - an all Canadian social media platform, based on the ATmosphere protocol that powers Bluesky. That decentralized protocol means the data that I put on it (and any other Atmosphere based network) is mine, and can be ported out from a network that I want to exit from. I signed up for the beta, but I had a little trouble getting started since I used an email that is different from the one that I have an account with on the Google Play Store (I'm an Android user).

I've been posting there a little and started following people etc. Here's what I notice so far:

Atmosphere DID

A DID is a unique key on the Atmosphere. My BlueSky, Leaflet and any other Standard Site identity is @apkussma.bsky.social, but on Gander, I'm @apkussma.gander.social and they don't use the same DID. That could be a good thing, but ultimately that means I have 2 (at least, so far) different Personal Data Servers (or PDS) and for someone who likes to cross post across different platforms, I'm going to have duplication. If I wanted to take my ball from Bluesky and reside on Gander exclusively, what would that look like?

Boards

This is my favourite feature (so far). I can create boards where I keep posts for long term collection. I have a private board to save for later, a board for Photos, and a board for each of my publications. So if people want to see my stuff on a given topic, but not all topics, they're all there in one place.

Nest

I think this is a circle of your favourite people to follow on Gander. So far I have only one (I hope she doesn't take it the wrong way), mostly I've been too lazy to manage it. When I look at following people on Gander (though I apply the same logic on Bluesky and Mastodon), I try and determine:

1. Is this a real person?
2. Do they have some kind of personality? That means personal interests of some kind beyond a political ideology
3. Is there any potential overlap in their personality/personal interests and my own? The nice part about Gander (so far) is that having been in Beta seems to mean no bots yet, so #1 is usually satisfied, and since everyone is Canadian, satisfying #3 is also quite common. Hopefully my Nest will get bigger.

Algorithm

Unfortunately, the default when I open the app seems to be a 'For You' feed, and that means an algorithm is deciding what I see. Though it has promised to be free of ragebait etc., I know the 'if it bleeds it leads' could win out when the data being pushed to me is 'optimized' by an agenda that isn't my own. I can (and do) navigate to a 'Following' feed most of the time, but it's not a good sign.

I've seen some complaints about moderation and content advisories that label the CBC as having a Centre-Left bias. I can decide for myself on the reliability of major media outlets, but I wonder where Gander is getting its bias evaluation from. MediaBias Fact Check is an American company, so I'll take their advisories with fistfuls of salt. Outsourcing this info to Americans is a bad look for Gander, especially when this service is of dubious necessity. I do like that there is a check if content is AI generated, but I think it's based on the honour system.

I also notice a lack of threaded posts for if you need to go on a longer rant, but don't want to move to a long form platform. I won't be able to port my #SongListSunday lists to that platform until threads are a thing.

Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message" and I'll intrepret that to mean that the main value of a social media platform is its userbase. Based on that, since everyone I've seen on there seems to be a lovely person, I'll give Gander a tentative thumbs-up.