I thought I'd try it about two years ago before dropping fully away from Facebook. Minds is largely patterned after its scrolling timeline and direct messages. Its software and interface appeared refined. Its introductory publicity, design, and messaging also seemed refreshingly neutral (though in recent years it seems fashionable to find that suspicious).

Facebook, for its faults, did well at helping real people find and connect with each other according to their everyday identities, and I was hoping for something like that, but with more of a worldwide scope. So I joined, posted now and then, and looked around a little for conversations to join.

In summary: when I occasionally visited, my timeline would be full of junk, made up mostly of pretty low-level trolling and "baiting" memes about topics I wouldn't call the day's most controversial, but perhaps among the day's most contention-spurring at the approximate level of the social network.

To my knowledge, I only received one marketing-related e-mail from Minds alerting me to featured accounts I could follow, such as "Right Wing Watch" and "Libs Of TikTok". I know these as opposing sources of instances of Americans framed as examples of the worst of their respective political persuasions. Perhaps Minds thinks it's doing something impressive by elevating both, rather than doing something unimpressive not just once, but twice?

The accounts I found, naturally, were mainly pseudonymous, many seeming merely to peddle and relay the aforementioned.

I could go on, but I needn't.

I expect flotsam in any social network, so I allot time and effort to find the value beneath. With Minds, I couldn't find it.

As Twitter undergoes what I'm sure are highly distinguished managerial shifts, I'm happy and somewhat proud to see that Mastodon, the superior federated social networking software by Eugen Rochko, is the primary benefactor of the diverging attention. This article aside, I haven't found Minds mentioned once.