remacle OP t1_ix1v1jr wrote on November 20, 2022 at 2:30 AM

Reply to comment by Gagewhylds in I am a coder, lifetime reader and launched "Mastodon Books" - I invite you to join us for book reviews, releases, discussions and meet the authors. by remacle

Mastodon is "a free and open source decentralized social network". Users join a specific Mastodon server, rather than a single website or application. In my case I built a Mastodon server (instance) that focuses on books, reading and discussions. Mastodon servers are connected as nodes in a network, and each server can administer its own rules, account privileges, and whether to share messages to and from other servers.

So as a user when you join, you can browse and interact with 'Local' posts related to books. Or you can switch (1 click) to 'Federated' to browse and interact with the entire Mastodon network and go back to 'Local' with another single click. The platform feels like Twitter but the big difference is, we all own it. And you, as a user, are free to go wherever you want including transferring your account (with all followers) to another server. Mastodon is fun and free to use.Does that help?

Gagewhylds t1_ix1vfvs wrote on November 20, 2022 at 2:33 AM

Yup! This is what I assumed, while I enjoy reading I don’t know if had to pick only one server that would be it. I had heard someone mention it acted like subreddits in a way so I suppose I wondered if you could be on multiple servers.

remacle OP t1_ix1yw6j wrote on November 20, 2022 at 3:02 AM

Yes, subreddits are a good example of an instance of Mastodon. But imagine if you could interact interact with all subreddits at once with the click of a button. That's Mastodon.