>The idea of an open web where actors use common standards to communicate is as old as, well, the web. "The dreams of the 90s are alive in the Fediverse," Lemmer-Webber told me.
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>In the late '00s, there were more than enough siloed, incompatible networking and sharing systems like Boxee, Flickr, Brightkite, Last.fm, Flux, Ma.gnolia, Windows Live, Foursquare, Facebook, and many others we loved, hated, forgot about, or wish we could forget about. Various independent efforts to standardize interoperation across silos generally coalesced into the Activity Streams v1 standard.
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>Both the original Activity Streams standard, and the current W3C Activity Streams 2.0 standard used by Mastodon and friends, offer a grammar for expressing things a user might do, like "create a post" or "like👍 a post with a given ID" or "request to befriend a certain user." The vocabulary one would use with this grammar is split into its own sub-standard, the Activity Vocabulary.
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>Now that we have a way to express a person's stream of thought and action in JSON blobs, where do all these streams go? The ActivityPub standard is an actor-based model which specifies that servers should have a profile for each actor providing a universal resource indicator (URI) for each actor's inbox and outbox. Actors can send a GET request to their own inbox to see what the actors they follow have been posting, or they can GET another actor's outbox to see what that specific actor has been posting. A POST request to a friend's inbox places a message there; a POST request to the user's own outbox posts messages for all (with the right permissions). The standard specifies that these various in- and outboxes hold activities in sequential order, much like our familiar social media timelines.
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>...
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>Here we have the vision of the Fediverse: a set of ActivityPub nodes, scattered across the globe, all speaking a common language. Mastodon is one of many efforts to implement the inboxes and outboxes of the ActivityPub standard. There are dozens of others, ranging from other microblogging platforms ("It's like Mastodon, but...") to an ActivityPub server that runs a chess club.
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>In theory, they all intercommunicate; in practice, not so much. The sources of incompatibility stem from several issues, from imperfections in the standard to questions of how online communities should form to efforts to reach beyond the standard post/comment/follow format of typical social networks. > >... > >What's next? The Fediverse may remain a host of small hosts. But there are economies of scale. In the federation model, a small, ragtag community sharing an instance is now stuck paying the server bill. > >In terms of skill and time costs, the preparation for many of the systems on the Fediverse is as easy as "just spin up a Docker container on a Raspberry Pi." Of course, most people cannot understand and execute that (relatively) simple instruction. > >Or the Fediverse may centralize. Large instances can be bought. The CEO of Tumblr has promised to implement ActivityPub ASAP, and with 135 million monthly active users, that could make Tumblr the bright giant around which the rest of the Fediverse revolves. MacWright speculates that in such a case, “Inevitably everyone's gonna get grumpy that they're dominating the standard and it's no longer an Indieweb thing, and the cycle starts over.”

Moving (back) to a set of open standards with an aim for interoperability is fundamentally a good direction to be moving in. Walled gardens certainly bring their users a certain set of benefits, but if recent actions by various platforms have shown, also brings a set of challenges as well. It will be interesting to see what the future brings for ActivityPub and its various platforms, and hopefully this growth is managed well, with an eye to longevity and resiliency.

I tried to get into Mastodon but couldn't really grasp it. I don't use Twitter, but I do want to find a Social Media platform that does not want to harvest every bit of my time and life to sell to anyone. I want to find a place to connect socially that isn't all about ads or politics. Mastodon seems to fit the bill, but I couldn't get engaged with how segregated everything is.

To me one of the main selling points of current Social Media giants is the user base. Being connected to everyone on the globe all at once is the main feature. I think the lack of user population is probably one of the biggest reasons its difficult to find a replacement with Mastodon and others.

It feels like Mastodon is competing with Discord more than it is with Twitter. Discord is what I immediately think of if I want an independently moderated group based on a specific topic.

I think it’s kind of funny and sad that people are hoping against hope that Mastadon could be a viable alternative for Twitter, and are basically lying to themselves out of frustration because they don’t actually like Mastadon but now feel like they are “stuck” with it being the only viable alternative. And the cherry on top of that is that the people who run Mastadon don’t give a flying fuck about what the people are clamoring for and are actively refusing to listen to user feedback, all because they are on some sort of religious crusade that has nothing to do with any sort of market research, any sort of user feedback — they are just sitting there smelling their own farts while letting this great and transformative opportunity go to waste.

I don’t think Mastadon has a chance in hell of ever going mainstream, simply because the people who run it don’t give a fuck. It’s one thing to stick to your guns, but it’s another thing to be an arrogant fool.

Years ago, people left Digg to move to Reddit — which worked out, because at the time Reddit was a genuinely good platform. Same thing happened when people Left MySpace for Facebook, it was actually an improvement in many ways. This time, with Mastadon, it’s different because Mastadon is such a huge downgrade from what people were used to, and there is no will from the developers to do anything about it.

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>This time, with Mastadon, it’s different because Mastadon is such a huge downgrade from what people were used to, and there is no will from the developers to do anything about it.

This was also my takeaway from the article. If you read this article only as an end-user wanting to get into Mastadon, it sounds like 100000% too much work. People are drawn toward FB, Instagram, and Tiktok because it's easy to jump in. As much as people cry about privacy (and they're not wrong), we see their behaviors are completely at odds with this belief: people will very easily trade their privacy for entertaining and easy-to-use platforms.

For Mastadon to succeed beyond the dozens of webdevs who want to use it, it needs to think more about the end-user.

Tags are super useful to reach new people on mastodon. Give it a try.

I honestly think this is a branding problem more than anything. I joined a Mastodon server in late October as part of the first Twitter migration, and while it took a minute to get used to, I didn’t find it all that difficult to learn. I also think a fair amount about what it would be like if I had to learn Facebook’s UX today from scratch. It’s more complicated than that of a typical Mastodon server.

A very good explainer. Thanks for sharing!

It’s not about complexity. On Twitter, you are a part of a global community. There is a constant sense of activity. On Mastadon, you are sitting in a dark room with a small handful of other lost souls.

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What specifically are the problems?

One of the things I’ve actually appreciated about Mastodon instances is that they’ve kept me more engaged. That’s because on Mastodon, you’re not limited to only seeing the posts of folks you follow or that those folks want you to see. You can easily see feeds of the posts of everyone on your instance, posts from the folks they follow and folks on other instances. Twitter initially offered a feed of all users on its service - it’s similar to that. So I’m exposed to ideas I don’t get on other services. That said, Mastodon’s 8M users are still largely early adopters - technologists, scientists, artists, activists, educators and journalists - as the post notes. That’s not everybody’s community. If they’re going to keep growing, Mastodon instances will need to attract folks from other communities - and that, in part, means addressing the perception that Mastodon is difficult to join and understand.

Honestly I've tried talking to several people about Mastodon, they aren't interested because of the name. It's weird to them.

I don't care, but I've seen first hand many people not willing to give it any time simply because it doesn't have a cute name.

To the average home computer user, and by that I mean people who don't go actively seeking out tech and IT forums and articles online, I doubt many of those average users understand what's truly involved with privacy online and what is done with the data and metadata the companies gather, profile and build about all their users.

There was an incident many years ago, I think it was something to do with a trial an ISP was doing, where the EU complained that they didn't consult the customers involved and explain what was happening or ask permission. The response, or excuse, was basically it's too complicated for them to understand so they didn't bother. I think it was to do with adverts.

The thing is, once Mastodon reaches critical mass it will have harmful-content moderation challenges like every other platform, but no revenue base to fund handling it; it's all on the lone instance maintainers to do that work.

Nice thing about Mastodon is that a node can choose the moderation they want and boot anyone that is causing problems. The big platforms have to please everyone which pleases no one.

Keep in mind the Fediverse is more then Mastodon. Do not like Mastodon choose something else.

We all need to go back to the days of GeoCities, who wants to be apart of my web ring?

Summary:

Mastodon is a social network that has gained popularity as an alternative to Big Tech platforms like Twitter. It has a decentralized network topology, meaning users can set up their own servers (instances) and communicate with users on other instances. This type of network is known as the Fediverse, and it is based on the ActivityPub standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is a rebellion against centralized web control, and its core goal is decentralization. Mastodon is just one of many efforts to implement the ActivityPub standard, and while they are theoretically able to communicate, there are still issues of incompatibility.

The .art community there evidently has ultra restrictive policies which end up excluding large chunks of the artists out there. They got there first and got to decide the rules, it's just a detriment to the potential transition over. Nothing can be done about it.

>And the cherry on top of that is that the people who run Mastadon don’t give a flying fuck about what the people are clamoring for and are actively refusing to listen to user feedback, all because they are on some sort of religious crusade that has nothing to do with any sort of market research, any sort of user feedback — they are just sitting there smelling their own farts while letting this great and transformative opportunity go to waste.

These open source project don't owe anything to anybody and Mastodon have nothing to gain from sudden influx of entitled users.

They don't sell your data and don't show you ads while still having to pay the bill for choosing beggars who've been accustomed to using free stuff online all their lives, bitching about where the project should go.

They can contribute code, open a fundraiser to raise funds to pay developers, or just go back to Twitter.

Once you get to a certain scale it will be impossible for a single person to handle that task, especially if they are trying to do it on a part-time unpaid basis. A big social media company like FB employs large teams to handle moderation issues in all regions of the world and many different languages, as well as AI to detect problematic posts. It's a huge job.

I don't have a problem with the name "Mastodon". I'm just so glad they changed the word "toot" to "publish". Can not read that without thinking of a fart.

Mastodon - the next big brother they want to push you towards since the current propaganda machine is losing steam.

I doubt big brother would let you host your own server lol.

What does it change? Illusion of freedom has been existing for over 20 years, think this will be different? Used to be idealist too...

I mean it's open source. There aren't a lot of open source social media sites around. You can host your own server with your own rules. It's less of a social media site and more of a framework to make your own.

Sounds to me like you just reinforced his point

I get the intent but I've stopped believing in free medias and information a long time ago. The means of oversight change, the control remains. Everything is repackaged to look new but the same bs remains.

Consider that we're currently talking on a platform that also makes significant use of community work to keep things in check.

I really feel this line of thinking. Online discussion was great back in the days when you had to really put effort into having the hardware and access to join in.

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I'm not very active on Reddit and I have no desire to moderate a subreddit so I'm not sure how it works on the various subreddits. Do some moderators here get paid?

Only if you add me to your top 8 on MySpace!

what's worse toot means "inside you" in Persian. It's weird af.

Take the advertising dollars away from Twitter. They can't operate on air. Problem solved.

It took you a minute to get used to it. You are obviously a technical end user. That's where Mastodon fails.

Way way back in the early days, Reddit was basically a bunch of nerds like us. However, the platform was easy to use and gradually grew beyond LISP jokes and PC mods.

And you could just start using it without actually signing up.

Beyond standards based stuff We could also like… make net neutrality an important issue again too…Seeing as my shitty isp that refuses to upgrade service beyond fucking 10mbs dsl in 2022 yet for some reason I have no problem streaming bullshit Roku in 2 rooms at once because those don’t get throttled but downloading a 5mb pdf old lawnmower manual takes a full 60 seconds or more…….

Except it's centralized and requires a team of admins and paid people to moderate illegal / extremely unsavory content. AFAIK Mastodon instances have no where near the same resources.

No but there are admins and a whole team of people who respond to reports of site-wide rule breaking.

I may not understand the actual details of the decentralized nature of the fediverse but I was under the impression that each instance benefits from the moderation of other instances. So that any individual user or instance that is blocked by one instance is flagged so that other instances can decide what to do with this information.

There is no need for a single large team to do all this work because there isn't a single monolithic service that needs to cater for all users.

I'm probably living in a fantasy world but I still have reservations about putting all my trust in one commercial entity.

The economic model creates additional challenges. Without corporate financing, ad revenue or other support, admins need to limit access to their servers so they can pay the bills. That means users can’t necessarily immediately join the instances that best meet their interests. Users then come away saying Mastodon is too complicated. But some of it is also branding. When you use terms like “server” and “instance,” users assume the network is only for those who are tech-savvy.

All that said, learning to navigate Mastodon really isn’t any more complicated than learning how to navigate subreddits. When I say it took me a minute to learn the Mastodon UX, it also takes a minute to learn Reddit’s UX and culture - the importance of replying vs. posting, how to find active subreddits that meet your interests, the rules of subreddits, etc. And I’d argue that learning how to navigate a Mastodon instance is easier than learning how to navigate Facebook right now - that UX is a trainwreck.

I'm sure companies like Google and Microsoft will set up Mastodon instances, and provide support services. They will want to mine the user data.

Welcome to open source. Fart smelling is the primary pastime.

Open a PR or start a bounty?

If they don't want your changes fork it and maintain your own branch that's got all those things you think it should have.