ChrisFirst of all, what is Mastodon?
From joinmastodon.org
it’s a network of thousands of communities operated by different organizations and individuals that provide a seamless social media experience
Mastodon’s nature lays in the federated web (aka Fediverse).
Meaning it’s a network of interconnected instances of Mastodon, each focussing on a topic or community.
E.g. recently I joined one for Free & Open-Source Software, and the Italian community on Mastodon.uno
So, it’s basically like Twitter or Facebook?
Yep, No, Kind of.
It’s technically a “federated micro-blogging platform”, meaning you can share your thoughts (in 500 character long “toots”/posts) with other people and interact with them. It’s a network of social networks (since you can be part of multiple networks).
Thus, in my opinion, it brings all the “classic” issues of social networks:
free speech, hate, moderation, self promotion, trolls.
You get the point.
Although, I like the concept of mastodon being an ensemble of social networks, letting you decide which instance you want to be part of.
You can join an instance, host your own, connect with people from other instances, etc.
A neat technicality: it uses the ActivityPub protocol to communicate with other instances and servers.
Even made my own instance on mas.cri.dev
How do I get started?
Check out the community chooser to discover instances of your interest.
E.g. there is one for Linux enthusiasts, programming related, language based.
Alternatively, you can use instances.social to filter the ones based on your interests.
Another option is to visit communitywiki.org/trunk/ and follow users on different instances, based on your interests. (thanks Garrit)
The Fediverse
The potential of Mastodon is great, but even more so of the Fediverse.
Many users on Mastodon are not actually from mastodon, but from services like Pleroma and others
The interconnection/communication between these different services is amazing.
It’s like being able to talk to someone on Twitter, even though you only have a Facebook account.
(Thanks Garrit for the insights)
Join me on mas.cri.dev!