Adam @adam@librem.one

When it came time to reckon with social media’s failings, nobody ran to the “web3” platforms. Nobody asked “can I get paid per message”? Nobody asked about the blockchain. The community of people who’ve been quietly doing this work for years (decades!) ended up being the ones who welcomed everyone over, as always.

I'm really not worried about Mastodon scaling issues at all.

When I left Twitter in 2008, we had roughly twice as many users as the current combined Mastodon network, all running on one MySQL server that had the same specs as a high-end 2013 MacBook Pro, plus roughly 10 web servers and 5 queue servers.

To be fair, growth wasn't as rapid, and we had local-infra advantages over federated systems, but these problems are solvable and I have no doubt will be fixed soon.

*Hugops to all admins!*

Stephen Fry deleted his Twitter account and moved to Mastodon!❤️

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

In 2017 I wrote a Wired column about "antiviral design" in social media ...

... or, niche/small blogging/posting sites that were designed to *inhibit* viral waves of attention: https://www.wired.com/story/this-stripped-down-blogging-tool-exemplifies-antisocial-media/

The opposite of how Twitter works

I wasn't yet back then aware of Mastodon!

But the more I've used it, the more I've noticed that Mastodon has similarly antiviral properties

It isn't designed to foster massive joint attention on viral posts

This unsettles a certain class of Twitter émigré

Federated social media isn't weird or too hard for a layperson. Email is federated, with hundreds of possible client softwares and thousands of possible servers, if not more! All these manage to interface together with dozens of strange arcane protocols. And yet, it is wildly successful and used by both the most technical people and the least technical people alike.

For those who want to set up your own instance - this is a good link - https://stuxhost.com/knowledgebase/14/Easy-Mastodon-social-media-setup-with-Yunohost.html - but you install Debian and then yunohost and then let it install mastodon - the nice thing is that it tells you all the DNS params you need. Very turn key. Probably took me about an hour to do it (well, you still have to deal with DNS propagation)

I see a lot of people talking about how Mastodon "Feels like the Internet I remember from 20 years ago."

That's no accident. That's Federation. That's UseNet, IRC, Email, Message Boards, etc. What do they all have in common?

Federation: Users congregating around watering holes of common interest, but still being a part of a larger whole.

THIS IS HOW THE INTERNET WAS DESIGNED TO BE. And I am HERE for it.

This explainer is just so well written

Mastodon and Twitter can coexist. Mastodon is for smart content, Twitter is for watching Elon Musk own himself.

At the end of the world the only way to protect your human rights and privacy is Open Source and Free Sofware. #Nextcloud

I KEEP JOINING CENTRALIZED SERVICES AND THEY KEEP BETRAYING ME HOW DO I BREAK THIS CYCLE

@rysiek @nickmurison

The notion that the "decentralized nature of the 'fediverse' ... makes it vulnerable to break and crumble at any time" makes me suddenly rather worried that the Internet [1] could break and crumble any time... ;)

[1] https://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html

Do you like the ​ mark? Here you have it listed next to about 1000 others - https://emojos.in/infosec.exchange?show_all=true&show_animated=true

If you are new to Mastodon and coming from the Twitter tide, here’s a few amazing Mastodon features that are NOT ON TWITTER. Enjoy! 🐘​

1. Content Warnings CW ⚠️​

It allows you to display a warning but hides the content of your post. Here’s a short guide I wrote about it: https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109282181601490676

2. Slow Mode 😌

In Preferences > Appearance, you can select the option “Slow mode” to hide automatic feed updates. You will then have to click at the top of the timelines to see new posts (ex: “10 new items”).

3. Custom Emojis ​

When you write a post (called a toot here), you can select emojis that are custom to your server (called an instance here). In the toot field, click on the 😂 button in the upper right corner to see what’s available there. Some are really neat! ​

4. Mastodon is different ​

There is no suggestion algorithms here, no promotion, no ads. This is a community. You can be more of your true complex and unique self. Engage with others genuinely. Follow others you like no matter their followers count. Describe yourself and what interests you in your bio, you are not as limited by characters count here.

Be yourself. Leave the toxicity out, it is not valued here. Respect others. Be a kind human. Share what you love. Make friends ​

https://pruvisto.org/debirdify is much more effective at finding Twitter followers that have a Mastodon account than https://twitodon.com/