Mastodon

[Chalice Yao]

The most obvious difference between Mastodon and Twitter is the timeline; if you don't know anyone on Twitter this does not matter, Twitter will fill it for you. With Mastodon it is a different story, here you've got to first to follow some people on such an instance before you will see anything. .

Depends, I think. It might have been because of your own instance setup.
On my instance, there is the 'Local' and 'Federated' timeline, which are both filled either with all the posts happening by users on your local instance, or posts from the instances yours federates with:

No following required - but of course unlike Twitter, this is not 'curated' for you. It simply shows the latest posts - which is juuuust fine for me.

 

[Lexxi]

My server has been offline all day, so no can't tell if anything is going on re: Mastodon.

 

[Cate Foulsbane]

Yeah the servers are getting hammered with all of the refugees. I've seen the numbers and it's just astounding. I wonder if the creators of Mastodon ever imagined this many people joining and using the service.

The federated nature of Mastodon CAN handle the enormous amount of traffic if it is distributed across the several servers. The problem with that is, people aren't flooding ALL the servers, they're only flooding the ones with the highest number of people in them, because that's the logical thing to do as a user.

Mastodon itself and all of its supporters will say over and over again that the server you join doesn't matter, that you can search and follow and talk to people across servers seamlessly - and that's true, but it's also not intuitive at all - like, it doesn't make sense to a newbie. If it doesn't matter "which server" you join, why are there even different servers? Why are most of the servers divided into interest categories? If I'm an artist AND I sometimes like to talk about climate change, which server to I join - the art one, the climate justice one? Neither? If I join Mastodon.art, does that mean I can't make posts about climate change or if I make too many they'll complain?

These things all are, I think, sufficiently explained - but they DO have to be explained to people, hence the whole meme about how listening to someone explain Mastodon is like listening to Geordi LaForge explain how he's going to solve the A-plot.

I followed a link to a beautifully written piece about the Mastodon regulars, pre-Twitter refugee invasion, being traumatized and some mourning the loss of the comfy home they had. I can't say I am sorry to be one of those who went to Mastodon, but now I sure do feel bad about being part of the home-invasion which is probably what it feels like to many. And, yeah, endless instructions and explanations for the newbies being posted all over the place. sigh... I'm going to try to back off..read and learn from a distance..and try to be a better new neighbor. If this works, here's the article: Home invasion - Mastodon's Eternal September begins

 

[Cate Foulsbane]

My server has been offline all day, so no can't tell if anything is going on re: Mastodon.

A lot of the servers crash because of the huge crush of newbies. Stick to it, your server will be back. Meantime, maybe try a different one. We've made, are making,, such a mess over there. I feel sorry for them...and hope things calm down soon. I'm going to stick with it, but am going to try to be a better neighbor...if that is possible.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Joining the herd: what’s it like moving from Twitter to Mastodon?

Users fleeing Elon Musk’s takeover will find themselves in a different world – quixotic, communal and defiantly democratic

www.theguardian.com

 

[Essence Lumin]

With all the discussion about mastodon I made an account. That was easy. Pretty much like any other website. midnightexcursion@zirk.us . The least obvious point is how to find a reasonable server.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

‘Could this be Twitter without the toxic slurry?’ My week on Mastodon

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has left many users wondering if they should join its rival, which promises a ‘different kind of social media experience’. But how different is it? I decided to find out

www.theguardian.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

YES

George Takei (@georgetakei@universeodon.com)

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

After settling down Mastodon is for me like topic based web forums: instances pop up, and will find some topics sooner or later which interest the people there the most. By that instances will gain reputation as the anime instance to go, electronics engineering and whatsoever. So this reputation then will attract over time more like minded people. So I do expect general topic instances and specialized ones.

And in order to not be an island, these topic based instances can connect with each other. It's not mandatory, but heavily encouraged. So yeah, finding a good instance might be challenging.

Twitter on the other side is a "one for all" service, meaning it wants all stuff happening at the same time, and it's a data silo: easy to get in, hard to get out. Like all big internet services are made.

So Mastodon is by the people for the people while Twitter is by one big tech company somehow for the people. That's a big difference. I mean the original Twitter web site is so annoying when not being logged in, that someone just wrote a frontend to get rid of all the nagging screens to register, ads and more called Nitter. You know as big tech company that you are too annoying when people starting writing things like that just to be able to use your service. And if politicians would not blog on Twitter, it would have become irrelevant a long time ago.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

argent\@mastodon.lol

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The mass migration to Mastodon has, unfortunately but predictably, brought the predators along with it. So keep the same vigilance for shady messages and links. It is much more difficult for scammers to do this on a mass scale directly via Mastodon, but at least a few of them might be willing to put in extra work if it gets them results.

If you receive an email or response on Mastodon like the following, DO NOT click the link. It is a scam fishing for login details at the very least.

"Mastodon has detected botting malware on your PC that is congesting the Mastodon network. All affected accounts will be suspended within 24 hours unless removed. _https://REDACTEDLINK"

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Here's a nice text from the administrator and owner of an open Mastodon instance, about his experiences over five years doing so. About the good, bad and in between.

Overall the experience is the same like running a web forum, and they don't regret putting it online.

Use your translator of choice.

Über das Betreiben einer Mastodon-Instanz

Ich betreibe chaos.social seit fast fünf Jahren. Ein Rückblick.

rixx.de

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Ron Gilbert, the legendary developer of Monkey Island, wants to create a Twitter clone because he thinks that Mastodon is a train wreck: he hates the UI badly.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Mastodon will never satisfy some people because its design isn't friendly to "virality" or algorithmic popularity. Your post can get favorited a thousand times but that isn't going to make it more likely to be seen by people who don't already follow you.

A lot of people became well-known or popular thanks to virality, so it's understandable why they would think a service that doesn't accommodate it is "a train wreck".

I disagree with them though, because I think virality is the root cause of why social media, however incidentally useful or helpful, is actually a plague on the internet and humanity in general.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I disagree with them though, because I think virality is the root cause of why social media, however incidentally useful or helpful, is actually a plague on the internet and humanity in general.

Cody right now:

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I hate that virality is so important. Lack of virality is what killed Google Plus, because it meant you had to look for content instead of letting the mighty algorithm stuff you like a fat goose, so people logged on, didn't see anything, and called it a "ghost town". At least Mastodon bootstraps you with the local instance's feed.

 

[Noodles]

A lot of people became well-known or popular thanks to virality, so it's understandable why they would think a service that doesn't accommodate it is "a train wreck".

Because not everyone has a bio in their profile for those tools going around to locate, I went actively searching timelines for the word "Mastodon" to see people just mentioning they have a Mastodon account.

Occasionally there would be skeptics, who were usually very negative on it. These people were almost ALWAYS people who rely on virility to "be popular".

Other common results were some people who were not skeptical, but just could not "figure it out".

The next most common (beyond actual links to profiles) were fans of the band Mastodon.

Also notable, ZERO brand or celebrity accounts mention it.

 

[Free]

How secure a Twitter replacement is Mastodon? Let us count the ways

The demise of Twitter's security and privacy teams has people looking for alternatives.

arstechnica.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

One of the coolest features of Mastodon is switching servers without data loss, loss of followers or any other kind of major disruption. If you want to switch over to another instance, you can just take your data, upload it there and let the old server point to the new one without loosing any follower.

So if you feel that the choice of your first server was not so good, don't worry, Mastodon got you covered.

Change or Switch servers on Mastodon: Step-by-step guide

nerdschalk.com