They have passed a couple of weeks after Elon Musk bought Twitter. A relatively short period of time, in which the richest man in the world has got to fire half the staff of the social network and introduce a controversial blue check for a feeat a cost of $ 20 and then $ 8, after a singular negotiation with writer Stephen King.
It’s no mystery that many don’t like the direction Twitter has taken. So that, according to a Bot Sentinel report reported by MIT Technology Reviewfrom 27 October over a million people would have abandoned the social network of the bird (also if the company talks about a growth in users “never seen before”).
Few, many or many, where have all these people gone? A part of them has landed on Mastodon, an open source social platform, decentralized and ethical that actually resembles Twitter for many of its core features. Since October 27, almost 500 thousand new users have landed on the social network, as announced by the founder, Eugen Rocko. At the time of writing, the official Mastodon app is at number 6 in the ranking of the most downloaded on iOS in Italy.
The numbers are still low in an absolute sense, averaging 1.3 million active users per month, against Twitter’s nearly 240 million, but it’s probably wrong to think of Mastodon as a replacement for the platform founded by Jack Dorsey. He remembers it, but it is different for a series of profound reasons, which define its identity and objectives. For this reason, the many new members are also struggling to find their way: here we answer the 5 questions that we happened to hear more often.
The analysis
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How do you sign up for Mastodon?
To count, in the act of registration, it is not so much the technical procedureas much as the way the platform is organized. Mastodon is in fact a network of mini social networks, called instances or servers. Each instance has different themes, languages, objectives and policies. This means that the inscription concerns in the first instance the choice of the server (here is a list): the most famous ones in Italian they are Mastodon.uno and Level secret. Once registered, you get a nickname similar to an email address, with this form: @ username @ instance name.
Selecting an instance mostly has to do with content moderation policiesthe language or topic in which you are most interested, but does not affect the experience on Mastodon: once inside, the user is able to interact and see content from any profile, regardless of the space to which it is registered.
A clarification: Mastodon can be accessed from a browser and from an app, where the path could be complicated, however, because there is more than one. After all, the protocol underlying the social network is public and open source. The official one, at the moment, does not seem to be the best choice: on iOS many recommend MetaTextwhich becomes Tusky on Android.
What can be done once inside?
We said it: Mastodon is very similar to Twitter. And many features are replicas than those of the social network of the little bird. You can build your own profile, with photo and cover image and a bio. There are no tweets, but toots, which can be up to 500 characters long. You can like or retweet (it’s called a boost), as well as mention a profile or send private messages.
Those who come from Twitter will notice the absence of the possibility of re-sharing a toot by adding a comment: it is a choice of field, dictated by a functionality that according to the founder “it is potentially toxicbecause, even when used with the aim of criticizing bad content, it ends up giving it visibility ”.
How is the content organized?
As you can see, the methods of publishing content are not all that different. What changes a lot, compared to Twitter, is the way the user accesses the posts. There are 3 timelines on Mastodon, the flows through which the toots are seen. And none of them use an algorithm.
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Home: in this timeline, the default one, the toots from the people the user follows appear, in chronological order from the most recent.
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Locale: here you can see all the toots of your server, always starting with the most recent.
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Federation: this timeline guarantees, together with the Local one, the possibility of discovering new accounts and topics of discussion. Here you can see toots that come from other instances, the other small social networks that make up the Mastodon network. The Federated list is composed on the basis of the interactions of the members of the server of belonging: there are the toots from accounts followed by at least one profile of the instance to which you are registered and those re-shared by at least one user of your space. They are always sorted starting with the most recent.
Also the absence of the algorithm is the result of a clear choice: Mastodon does not collect user data, which is essential for feeding artificial intelligence (and does not sell it, because there is no advertising). This also changes the way you interact: a like means appreciation but does not increase the visibility of the content, it is not a positive signal for the algorithm. The only way to spread a post is the boost, the twin of the retweet.
Who moderates the content?
Each instance has its own moderators and rules. As anticipated, it is the user who chooses the server to subscribe to, also on the basis of values and objectives. This, in Mastodon’s intentions, allows to divide the tasks, to distribute the responsibilities among several people, counting on the legitimate interest in keeping these spaces clean. In short, each server chooses its own rules and undertakes to enforce them. If there is a problem with one instance, the entire network can take action.
This approach can be effectively told through the story of GAB, an alt-right server born on Mastodon in 2019, which became known and frequented also thanks to the violent language and extremist positions: “Mastodon – reads on the blog of the Italian server Mastodon.uno – condemned GAB in an official statement, but because it is decentralized, the team was structurally unable to prevent the platform from using open-source software ”. The solution was the involvement of the entire network: the most popular servers have stopped communicating with GAB, isolating users from the wider community. This led to the progressive abandonment of the server, which took place a little over a year later.
In other words, the system seems to be working at the moment: it will be interesting to understand what will happen when (and if) users increase in number.
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What is the Fediverse and what does it have to do with Mastodon?
Mastodon is just one of a family of decentralized applications, open source and unrelated to the logic of Big Tech. This group is called Fediverso and includes a series of platforms based on the communication protocol ActivityPubcompletely interoperable: among others, there are Pixelfed (an alternative to Instagram), Feddit (come Reddit ma open source) e Peer Tube for video hosting.
Interoperability means the possibility, whatever the service you are using, to see and interact with posts published on other platforms. The principle of operation it is very similar to that of e-mails. The mailbox is usually hosted on a proprietary server, but the use of standard communication allows you to communicate with all other services.