I really wanted to like Mastodon – but unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be using it, and I’ll tell you why.
If you’re not familiar, here’s the quick version of “what is Mastodon?”
Mastodon is a decentralized social network, built upon the ActivityPub protocol and the idea of a “Fediverse.” Instead of there being one single, centralized social media platform, you have a whole bunch of individual ones that are all interconnected with one another – much like how the web & Internet work, actually.
Because of the interconnection, Mastodon can work somewhat like a single social media platform (where you see everyone’s posts and activity), or you can use it more like a private server, where you only see activity & posts from users on the same instance as you. Or you can go anywhere in between. And each instance of Mastodon is free to run the service however they like – if they want to run a child-friendly site, they can do that, or if they want to only allow discussion on a single specific topic, they can do that too. If they want to interconnect with every other instance, they can, or they can choose to only connect with a few other select instances. If they want to have posts last for years, they can do that, or they can have posts get deleted after just a few days. Total freedom of choice!
Sounds great, right?
Well, as with most things, it is only great in theory. In practice, it leads to confusion over what instance to join and terrible fragmentation as some instances connect (or “federate”) with others – or don’t – at the whims of whoever runs that instance. And, of course, unless your instance is backed by someone trustworthy with the resources needed to run it long term, it might end up suddenly going away – taking all your posts with it.
This last scenario is exactly what happened to me the first time I tried to use Mastodon. I joined a particular instance which was a bit on the small side, and one day it just up and disappeared, with no warning. It was just gone.
Needless to say this left a bad taste in my mouth for the service.
But beyond even that, the concept of decentralized instances all run with their own rules and such and no central authority makes Mastodon somewhat like the Articles of Confederation of social media – and I predict it will work out about as well as they did (which is to say, not at all).
Of course, this is just my opinion, and I could be totally wrong and Mastodon could go on to be the Next Big Thing. And I’m not totally against it or anything – I just don’t have confidence in its long term ability to last. But I guess we’ll see!
Despite my recent post complaining about Mastodon, I do like the idea of it and I want it to succeed… so I decided to give it another try.
The hardest part, as always, is finding a server/instance – my interests are somewhat varied, so I didn’t want to join a server focused on just one thing and then possibly get in trouble later on for posting unrelated stuff. So I decided to go with a more general themed server.
I also wanted to choose one that was going to last – the first Mastodon instance I joined up and vanished on me without warning, and I didn’t want to go through that again. So I had to choose one I thought would still be around (or at least give some warning before shutting down).
Finally, I wanted one that had a good moderation policy. There’s a sort of informal standard policy called the Mastodon Covenant, which includes some ground rules for a good experience (no harassment, more than one person with emergency admin access, and a promise to give notice before shutting down), so I looked for instances that followed these rules.
Despite all this, it is still rather hard to find instances – decentralization means that there’s no master list you can just search; even the “official” Mastodon site only lists a few dozen instances. Yet, in the end, I made my choice and joined mastodon.sdf.org – and yes, part of that was just because their logo has a bunny in it – where you can find me as @keithius@mastodon.sdf.org.
It’s still rather tricky to find users that you used to follow on other sites (unless they list their accounts in their profile) – as far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to search for users, and you have to include their server/instance in your search or you won’t find anything (since instances are independent, you can have the same user name on multiple instances – thus, in reality, your “full” user name must necessarily include the instance domain name).
The app experience also isn’t great – on iOS (which is what I use) there are plenty of nice looking apps, but they all work a little differently, and none of them have any sort of autocomplete or intelligence to help make user searching easier. Essentially, to find someone who isn’t on the same instance as you, you have to search for them using a full URL – e.g., https://mastodon.sdf.org/@keithius – and needless to say this is tedious to type out on mobile devices.
The desktop experience isn’t much better. On Windows, there are a few apps, but most people just say “use the web interface,” which isn’t much help. But maybe things will improve with time.
So, for now, I’ll give Mastodon another shot – we’ll see how it goes.
Related Posts