10 questions to clear the way to Mastodon, the social network everyone is talking about
The self-destructive crisis Twitter has been going through since Elon Musk took over the company in late October has led to a flight of users looking for new digital homes.
While Mastodon isn’t necessarily the only natural destination for Twitter emigrants, the spectacular growth it’s experienced in recent weeks seems to demonstrate a clear preference for this network, in which even former Twitter employees have found refuge and started their own agency. have set up.
It is also true that the exodus is not without consequences, as Mastodon is not Twitter and both the software design and culture of each network respond to conflicting philosophies.
Mastodon is an implementation of the ActivityPub protocol for managing a microblogging service (the category they belong to, e.g. Twitter and Tumblr), whose open code allows it to be installed on any web server (constituting an instance) . Mastodon is also the federated agency network and ultimately a registered trademark of Mastodon gGmbH, a non-profit organization led by Eugen Rochko, creator of the software and administrator of the original server.
While Twitter is simple, Mastodon is frictionless by design. Twitter is centrally managed, with proprietary software, is a publicly traded company that sells advertising (and identity verification) and where algorithms have taken ownership of the user experience.
Mastodon, on the other hand, is decentralized, with free software, has no ads and no algorithms that change the user’s timeline.
It is not recommended to close the accounts, it is preferable to keep our identities and brands busy in that network. In addition, the profiles are the ideal place to share the links to our new destinations.
What is recommended is to download the account files to have a local backup and configure two-factor authentication to enhance account protection.
Without leaving the Twitter account, it seems reasonable to have a plan B in case the network implodes or goes out of business. There are many users who have taken the opportunity to return to their Tumblr accounts and there is also growing activity on Instagram.
However, from the time Elon Musk made the initial offer until he took over the company, the conversation about Mastodon became more and more prominent on Twitter (while the conversation about Twitter in Mastodon intensified).
It is inevitable to turn to Twitter as a reference to explain Mastodon, but not only because of this crisis but also for historical reasons. Mastodon was born in 2016 after a Twitter user left the network disenchanted with its inefficiencies. This is how Eugene Rochko designed Mastodon, inspired by Twitter but willing to undo all of its structural failures.
For this reason, I confirmed that Mastodon is the answer to the question: what would Twitter have been like if it had been developed by the free software community?
Choosing an instance (server) of Mastodon is somewhat similar to choosing an email provider: our identity is tied to the brand of the chosen platform (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail or Outlook) and, regardless of what our option, we will be able to communicate with everyone else’s users.
In Mastodon, there are generic instances (which are the most saturated) and there are thematic instances based on countries, regions, cities, languages, professions, disciplines, and hobbies.
Other things to consider when selecting an instance are:
– The size of the instance (number of hosted accounts) as it can affect the performance of the server and because it determines the experience of the local timeline, which corresponds to the updates of the users of that server.
– The acceptable usage policy and terms of service established by the administrator of the chosen instance (accepted languages, prohibited themes, blocked servers, unavailable content, etc.).
– The risk of defederation that the body could incur on the basis of its theme or because of its members.
The good news is that Mastodon accounts are perfectly transferable between instances, so there is always the option to move to another server (while preserving the community of the account, even if the content stays on the old one).
Paradoxically, the most direct method of finding out if our contacts are on Mastodon is to check their Twitter profile, as that’s where the identifiers corresponding to Mastodon are indicated.
One of the factors that convinced me of Mastodon’s potential for academic networking and the dissemination of science is its great diversity of scientific specialties with hundreds if not thousands of representatives grouped in perfectly recognizable communities: anthropology, archaeology, astrophysics. , Bioinformatics. , Biophysics, Economics, Chemistry, Communication, Criminology, Law, Digital Humanities, History, Neuroscience, Psychology, Sociology, etc. In Mastodon, a treasure awaits every researcher.
In Mastodon, there is no centralized verification of user profiles (Twitter’s blue emblem), there is only verification of the links that the user includes in their profile (up to four), and only as far as the account owner has entered a line of HTML code ( available in your profile) in the HTML file of the page to which the link points. In this case, the associated link will be displayed in green, indicating that it has been verified.
There is a very interesting service called Twittodon that allows cross-verification between a Twitter account and a Mastodon account and generates a link that, when added to the profile, confirms that correspondence and appears in green. Twittodon also provides access to a database of verified matches that can be used to locate Twitter users’ Mastodon accounts.
When we communicate our presence on Twitter to a friend, we can say “find me on Twitter” since knowing our name can perform a very simple search on Twitter’s internal search engine. Instead, saying “I’m on Mastodon” is like saying “I have mail”: there’s no way to locate you if you don’t specify which server you’re on.
In Mastodon, there is no centralized search (only searching in an instance’s database), nor is there a word search. You can only search by tags (#MastodonHelp), user profiles by username (@jlori@mastodon.cloud), user profiles by URL (https://mastodon.cloud/@jlori), and posts by URL (https://mastodon.cloud /@jlori/109331733327310686).
Outside of Mastodon, on a website, blog, or social media account, the proper way to communicate identity is through the account URL. Conversely, if you interact with the username (@jlori@mastodon.cloud), the browser interprets that sequence as if it were an email address.
Twitter’s original limit was 140 characters per tweet, later expanded to 280 characters, which is the limit so far. In Mastodon, the default limit has been expanded to 500 characters, although it is a limitation that any instance admin can change up or down.
The second characteristic that defines writing in Mastodon is the need to make heavy use of tags (similar to the content discovery logic that works on Instagram) so that posts transcend the boundaries of the local timeline (something that is also reached with followers from third parties ) and reach Mastodon users who do not follow us but follow the tag in question.
The official source, which should be thoroughly researched, is Mastodon Documentation and a highly recommended guide is Fedi.Tips.
The account of the developer of the original Mastodon software, Eugen Rochko, can be found at mastodon.social/@Gargron.
Finally, as I’ve already known, those users who are willing to overcome the obstacle course that joining Mastodon represents and learn its techniques and culture (unlearning some of the inherited) will find themselves in an environment that, for the old internet rockers , evokes memories of Usenet communities, the early days of the web and of course the blogging revolution.
This article was published in The conversation.
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
