7th November 2022
At the end of last week – exasperated by Twitter and the antics of its new owner – I opened a Mastodon account.
In one way, this is of no wider interest to anyone but me: it is just one person preferring one social media platform to another.
But in other ways, I do think there is something worth commenting on about this shift by me and many others – and worth assessing whether or not it is significant.
(For what it is worth, I acquired over 9k followers on there in 48h hours, and a number of legal and other commentators have joined the site too – I have called this a “Lexodus”.)
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Social media cannot be un-invented.
As long as a person has access to the internet and another person is willing to provide a platform for communication, there will be social media.
The particular platforms, however, will come and go.
Some of you will remember MySpace and Bebo and so on.
There is no reason why any one platform will always be the dominant platform.
And what is a business giant or successful commercial model at one time may not be a business giant or successful commercial model at another time.
For that is the nature of business and of technology.
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On the face of it, I should have a “stake” in Twitter.
I once spent a couple of years of my life litigating the once-famous TwitterJokeTrial case so as to explain Twitter and social media to the English legal system.
And I have acquired around 240k followers for my main Twitter account.
I am as versed in the lore and the tides and the currents and the perils of Twitter as any old sailor is of those of the sea.
So why move from there?
Well.
First, I am not moving completely – I will still use it as a medium for “broadcasting” my posts and my content elsewhere.
But Twitter is now pretty much a hellsite and a cesspit.
Every time you log in, the list of “trending” topics will make any liberal person’s heart sink.
Quote-Tweets and pile-ons and instant unpleasant replies mean that any considered conversation is all but impossible.
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Of course, much of this will be defended as “free speech!”.
But the free speech of one can mean the inhibition from speaking for others.
And that is as least as much of a free speech issue, if you think about it.
Twitter is structured so as to encourage rage-tweeting and it enables you to say the most vile things you can think of and get away with, just because you can.
I do not think it brings the best out of people.
I think social media can be done differently.
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Mastodon is different from Twitter in many ways, some of which are partly unseen and difficult to grasp.
Instead of it being one big site, it is a lot of sites with a common set of protocols.
As such, it is de-centralised.
But once you are in, you can communicate with those who joined via other “servers”.
Yes, some of the jargon is initially inaccessible – but so were RTs, DMs, QTs, #hashtags, and so on, once upon a time.
And each of those servers is independent, and they form a federation as an aggregate.
This means decision-making is decentralised and different servers can have different rules and policies.
And if one server turns vile – or allows vile stuff – then it can be rejected by the others.
As a liberal I find this system, with its in-built checks and balances, a lot more attractive and welcoming than Twitter.
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And what about in practice?
So far, the conversations and engagement on the new site have been pleasant and constructive.
As a worked example, click here for a question about Brexit which led to many helpful and informative replies.
Yes, some of the replies don’t directly engage the terms of the question, but you will see there is a general civility and calmness that contrasts with Twitter.
The longer character limits help too.
So far – and it is still an early stage – Mastodon seems a serious site for serious conversations.
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You may not want to join Mastodon – and I know several of you are not on Twitter.
That may be wise.
But if you do want to try a social media platform wired to avoid many of the unlikeable things about Twitter then Mastodon is worth having a try.
I cannot recommend any particular server – and there are glitches for many when they try to join, and so you may need to be patient.
And if you do join, do say hello and mention this post.
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It’s worth saying that some of this is due to design – a good article that lays out some of the differences and why: https://scott.mn/2022/10/29/twitter_features_mastodon_is_better_without/
A lot of Twitter’s issues are due to design choices made over the past decade, to push ‘engagement’ to increase eyeballs to increase advertising revenue. The cost has been that far too much of that engagement has been hateful and rage-tweeting. The changes to the platform’s design has actively encouraged it.
It is one of the reasons I doubt very much that Jack Dorsey’s new platform will be any good, given it was he who was responsible for virtually all of those design choices when he was CEO of Twitter.
I completely agree with you. It is often forgotten how hard Twitter was in the early days: 140 character limits, no images, difficult threading and links had be dragged manually through TinyURL. Rage-tweeting was more or less impossible since, by the time one had tackled the interface issues, one would have (for the most part) calmed down and considered whether the often vacuous comment was really worth the effort. My personal observation is that the rise of intollerance and intemperate tweeting is linked to the increasingly frictionless interface. What was considered a flaw was in fact it’s most important feature.
I do find Mastadon a little difficult to get to grips with. I welcome this.
I agree that Mastodon is worth a try. Its model is far better than Twitter and a lot of users joining will oblige it to improve functionalities.
I use Twitter mainly to learn things and exchange with interesting people. Mastodon should allow me to do this.
Personally I would not be adverse to a model of voluntary subscription like Wikipedia or the Guardian into which I pay monthly as I value both their model and what they offer.
Joining Mastodon is on my to do list for this week.
It will be good to show Mr Musk that we are not as captive as he thinks we are and dependent on his whims.
thanks for the useful link!
Thanks for the very interesting link!
In the article, the author links to another incredibly useful introduction which I think deserves special highlighting:
https://wordsmith.social/elilla/a-futuristic-mastodon-introduction-for-2021
It’s long but was a joy to read as it answered all my immediate questions about how the “fediverse” works and how you make the most out of it.
Some of the advice sounds tailored to their particular community (is everyone on Mastodon really expected to always add content warnings for pictures of non-vegan food?), but you get the idea. If the Lexodus crowd ever starts their own Mastodon instance, I’d assume one of the server rules would require adding the content warning “exciting constitutional law” where applicable.
Mastodon does look a much more peaceful venue. Is that because people like the ERG and Brexiters have not adopted it too. Your worked example seemed, on a quick read, to comprise contributions from people who shared the same broad opinions, rather than deeply opposing world views.
Any Fediverse server – be it Mastodon or another speaking the same protocol – which is perceived to be toxic or otherwise troublesome is likely to be blocked by others.
The way the system operates is that, should ERG types join, they either have to do so on their own instance which would have its own rules or they would have to join an existing one and agree to its terms and conditions.
If the former and they post on Mastodon in a way that is detrimental to civil discourse, it is trivial for people to block their instance and stop seeing the bile from everyone on it. This already happens for hate and abuse-filled instances, which exist but are blocked by most other instances. They’re welcome to have their echo chambers of hate but no one sane wants anything to do with them.
If the latter, they’re forced to converse in a civil fashion or they’ll get reported and be booted from the instance.
In other words, if and when they do eventually migrate to Mastodon, they’ll have to behave well and participate in discourse in a positive rather than negative way or they’ll get blocked. Therefore, the choice they’ll have is to be civil and get their views heard and debated or be uncivil and (rightly) get shunned.
Btw, this is equally true for everyone communicating with them too. If you abuse them you too can get booted and shunned. It isn’t a one way street.
It remains to be seen whether or not this system will work this way at scale but that’s how it has worked so far.
From a user perspective it is a blessed relief that you have the power to block everyone who signed onto the “iposthatredallthetime.server” in one tap/click rather than having to wade or risk wading through hundreds of accounts, blocking them individually.
The article on The Verge is worth reading to understand the relationship between Trump’s Truth Social and Mastodon
No, it’s more peaceful because there is no commercial gain in encouraging clashes, rage, “time spent on the site/in the app”.
Once you lose the commercial need to maximize time on the site, there is no need to train your recommendation algorithm to provide the user with something that irritates them slightly. Not enough to drive them away, but enough to keep their hair raised.
Oh, did I mention, that Mastodon has a standard timeline algorithm that could be coded up and understood by a 1st year computer science student?
While for Twitter’s recommender you would probably want a 3rd year AI/Data scientist student as a minimum, just to grasp the basics?
I agree that Mastodon is worth a try. Its model is far better than Twitter and a lot of users joining will oblige it to improve functionalities.
I use Twitter mainly to learn things and exchange with interesting people. Mastodon should allow me to do this.
Personally I would not be adverse to a model of voluntary subscription like Wikipedia or the Guardian into which I pay monthly as I value both their model and what they offer.
Joining Mastodon is on my to do list for this week.
It will be good to show Mr Musk that we are not as captive as he thinks we are and dependent on his whims.
I, too have set up an escape account in Mastodon @clfh@mastodon.green
I picked the .green instance because of my interest in the environment (rather than nominative determinism :-).
I have discovered a distinct design advantage over Twitter: the ‘Local’ timeline consists of toots from that instance. So, as the .green instance has attracted many environmentally-minded individuals, its Local timeline becomes like a #greenTwitter.
I can see the possibility of joining several interest-focused communities. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if the Mastodon world has / develops a culture of clearly signposted topic-specific instances. The federal structure should prevent these from becoming closed bubbles.
In 24 hours in Mastodon I’ve collected 50% of the number of followers I had in Twitter. I could only understand why about 10% of my Twitter followers would want to follow me. In Mastodon I can understand the reasoning of all my new followers.
Joined Mastodon a few days ago @kyrl@mastodon.green I am on twitter also. Quite aside from issue of quality of discource, various other issues arise including the need to build a base of contacts on Mastodon and the limitations of existing search functions. I am grateful to DAG who has been very helpful in identifying good people to follow on Mastodon it would be good if others did that too in areas they specialise in. Hopefully more user friendly interfaces will develop too. At present I find the enhanced bowser based Mastodon page better than an app.
As a liberal Mastodon is attractive. As an internationalist, both Twitter and Mastodon fail. Mastodon more so?
If I follow a non English speaker who tweets in English, they will periodically tweet in their native language. Think EU parliamentarians. Twitter allows me to click on a translation of the original tweet but I need to click on each non-English response for a translation. Facebook is the same.
Mastodon does not appear to offer any translation facility. Ok Mastodon is young and poorly resourced. Twitter and Facebook have no excuse.
Automatic translation to your default language is needed to build an international community. (Also I have signed up to a Welsh “instance”).
From what I have read, this was a conscious design choice – those Translation features on Twitter etc send the content to a third party for the translation (do you remember ever being asked for your consent to have your content sent elsewhere like that by Twitter?). This somewhat goes against the ethos of people who develop Open Source software and Mastodon where your content is not meant to be scraped and analysed for ulterior motives.
However, the next release of Mastodon (version 4.0) is apparently due to have such a feature. It’ll be interesting to see how they’ve implemented it while maintaining that ethos.
I think it depends on the client you use – the Mast app has a translate function. The biggest issue so far for me is the fact that there isn’t a go-to app – all the ones I’ve tried so far have had their drawbacks.
I have also recently signed up to mastodon (https://mas.to/@autisticphotographer), for similar reasons to yours. I am also staying on twitter for the moment.
It would appear that many are following your path as ATMIT the UK site is overloaded with registration applications and consequently unavailable.
It’s been salutary to recognise how much Mastodon depends on hashtags, and why. M doesn’t allow searches for plain text, which greatly inhibits bots, spammers and muckrakers – a wholly good thing and well worth the inconvenience.
Like most people on Twitter, I long ago stopped using hashtags except for irony, or for communicating with subsets (like #Newsnight or #Strictly viewers).
Likewise, it’s cool on Twitter to just Like a tweet, and you can do that, knowing that the algorithms see the Like and so you add to the tweet’s traction. On Mastodon you need to make ‘boost’ (= retweet) the default, otherwise you’re just telling the OP that you’ve seen it.
So much of Twitter, you only really start to appreciate once you’re on Mastodon, depended on functions that seemed to give, but were actually just taking; offering us ease of use and cool, while grabbing data on our interests and making us more manipulable.
DAG speaks of calmness, and that has been my overriding impression (after a whole 9 days!). The civility, yes, but also the gradual realisation of how much manipulation was going on, under the radar, on Twitter, and the relief, on being free of it, is palpable.
I understand the points you make about some Twitter functionality while delivering ease of use has also facilitated some of the toxicity . I would like to see mastodon become more user-friendly without adding the toxicity if possible. At the moment, building contacts who share interests on mastodon by using hashtags and boosts is not easy.
While perhaps answering at least some of the problems with Twitter in the short-term, if the Lexodus continues to be as successful as its initial uptake (I haven’t jumped yet, but have been researching the server things), what’s to say it will stay that way?
When I (reluctantly) joined Twitter back in 2011, it was dull, boring, slow, full of whales & eggs, and lunch: most of the time the server would crash, showing a whale; all profiles were eggs; and the vast majority of posts were about what someone was having for lunch.
I could see no purpose to it whatsoever.
I listened to social media experts, joined, and while it took a while to take-off, it’s firmly laid its stake in our media today – we Tweet our TV shows, follow our celebrities/sports personalities, as well as engage in whatever other interests we have.
David Bowie predicted the interactive Internet (social media) back in 1999 to a completely unconvinced Jeremy Paxman, predicting the (then) future as “good & bad”, describing it as “exhilarating & terrifying”, referring to “the actual context & the state of content”: https://youtu.be/FiK7s_0tGsg?t=645
For now, with what is still a relatively low user base, perhaps the content on Mastodon will be more polite – the trolls want to reach the widest audience, so perhaps not quite yet worth their time investing on there yet.
How long will that last though? Why shouldn’t the good & bad be expected, the terrifying & abusive join the Lexodus crowd if it takes off in the way it appears to be currently.
And with moderation, as I understand it, assigned to individual servers, does it have the potential to be an even-worse cesspit, rather than the greener grass that early adopters are currently enjoying?
I suspect I’ll dabble in Mastodon, but not yet convinced this will be the answer everyone who hopes for a better Twitter-like experience will find. No doubt, polite & professional at the start, but if it gets popular, the junk will surely soon be part of the Lexodus too – I suspect ultimately there’s no getting away from the good & bad that Nostra-Bowie foresaw, unless someone finds an efficient or AI way of actually moderating posts effectively. (Maybe that will be the next big thing…)
It is very likely that you will get a lot more trolling and Twitter-like negative behaviour as the platform grows and matures for sure, but it is worth reading the article I linked to in my earlier comment.
The people who created Mastodon are actually thinking about the potential negative consequences of what they can do with the software and choosing not to do them if the balance tips the wrong way. And they are also thinking about ways to proactively mitigate for such behaviour. So, while abuse etc will – and does – undoubtedly happen, it is possible the software can be designed to operate in such a way that it is contained, containable and doesn’t get amplified as much as it does on Twitter. And that means it becomes less desirable to behave that way.
Twitter has fallen victim to some truly poor design choices that actively encourage negative behaviours on the platform rather than discouraging them. In large part this has been because of money: they needed their, ‘we’ve got 700 million active users’ figures to be able to sell how ‘well’ they were doing to marketing agencies, shareholders and potential buyers, and the cheap and easy way to get those figures was to encourage slanging matches between people.
Elon Musk has come in with a position that he’s going to make it even worse, not better, so it isn’t a surprise that a lot of people have reached their tipping point and no longer want to participate there and are looking for an alternative. This is particularly true should enough of the interesting people they did follow on Twitter now become active elsewhere, including on Mastodon. It’s just too much hassle and actively detrimental to your mental health to have to wade through gallons of bile on Twitter just to see the ever decreasing number of things you were interested in.
That Mastodon thread you linked to reminded me of something.
The comments thread on a blog, back in the 2000-2010 ‘blogging heyday’ pre Twitter.
Plus ca change…
Warning: TechnoBabble subject to meandering mistakes.
Try not to think of Mastodon as being Mastodon. It is or it looks like a collection of FOSS tools from which you can build and run one yourself. Mastodon itself is the part that makes use of the other parts to give you the on-line instance. I am going to try that and it will involve a lot of head scratching.
For those using already available instances who are timid about the way the interface that stuff happens when you have to get used to something different. You will get there and become familiar with it over time. Also it will likely change, incrementally, over time to become better.
Yes, you can sign up to use someone else’s instance and work by their rules but a web address that includes the word Mastodon is, by and large, nothing special. It is something someone else has set up for others to use, likely for free, and likely based on their own hardware. In part this will be why the result is sometimes slow especially as more people sign up to any particular instance.
These people are not Twitter with access to the hole in Musk’s pockets. Then again this is the Fediverse and whilst I may be wrong an analogy might be a Union which, if allowed to flourish, becomes a power to reckon with.
Toots virtually at https://twitter.com/Frances_Coppola
AKA…
https://econtwitter.net/@frances_coppola
This, I guess, is someone setting up a Mastodon instance for economist types on twitter who want to try out Mastodon. Mastodon is not mentioned.
Having suggested Mastodon is nothing special take, as an example, davidallengreen.com
David owns that domain name. The site will be hosted ‘somewhere’ but given he owns davidallengreen.com he, or his friend, might or will have access to the means to set up DNS entries to his site. DNS is an address book that turns davidallengreen.com into a number where his site lives on the Internet.
Although he may not know it David, he probably does, now also owns mastolawandpolicy.davidallengreen.com
He, or his friend, just have to add the name to the DNS entries and point it at the right place. That does not have to be 143.95.39.205 where this site lives. He could point it to his own literal home address and, no doubt with help or self inflicted pain, run his own Mastodon instance on a Raspberry Pi under his bed.
Notwithstanding the dearth of such product this should be possible and Frightening especially to Mr Musk.
Not so much because David will have a Mastodon under his bed and need a ladder but that He can. There is an opportunity here to witness a paradigm shift, and subscribe to my initial coin offering, in the nature of Social Networking whereby individuals take back control by having Ancient Elephants in their Room.
Much of this went straight over my head – partly because i am not techie but also because I have never had a Twitter (or Facebook account) and see little reason to have one now. But if agency and ownership of one’s own IP remains with the individuals then so much the better and good luck to Mastodon. As a long time FT reader, there was an antediluvian epoch when one wrote to the editor and sometimes he/she published the letter. The letter remained copyright of the FT as it published it. No big deal to lose the copyright. Now, of course, one comments electronically in the FT and for my money, (despite the obvious and tedious Russian and Chinese trolls – but then all intelligence is valuable) this provides an excellent additional resource. I would wager that the FT has possibly the most international and informed readership on almost any subject of any medium on the planet and frequently the comments are more authoritative and informative than the original article. I am yet to be convinced Mastodon would serve me better. But then I do pay a £29 a month subscription fee to the FT.
I opened an account at Mastodon in April (@romeo_romeo_tango@mastodon.online), at the suggestion of a Wise Person, but hadn’t used it until yesterday.
It’ll take me a while to see how it all works (it took me months with Twitter), but one thing I wonder is if it will make it easier for a ‘little person’ like me to interact with someone with hundreds of thousands of followers and actually get a reply. This has rarely happened, although it was a big part of why I joined up in the first place. Steve Peers is the big exception, apart from people I already knew online, so Gold Star for him.
I also wonder if the likes of music enthusiasts will post on Mastodon their links to great recordings, or cricket clubs will post their news, other aspects of twitter I have valued.
And I haven’t seen any good jokes yet.
But I have patience and will persevere, as I can see Twitter circling the plughole already.
“I also wonder if the likes of music enthusiasts will post on Mastodon their links to great recordings, or cricket clubs will post their news, other aspects of twitter I have valued.”
The Absolute This! .
It’s the Fediverse. Ask your Cricket Club to host a Mastodon instance and let the fans sign up to it. Have their own accounts on it.
Your Cricket Club sets the rules and if it goes rogue the rest of the Fediverse blocks it.
An enjoyable read, David, with many perspectives that mirror my own or vice-versa.
I signed up for Mastodon in 2017 as an experiment. Five years ago I began to tire of the emerging toxicity on Twitter mostly focused on politics with too many people raging and rejecting any disagreement with their views. It’s just got worse since then and the rage has spread far outwards from politics.
Yet I still use Twitter which I joined in 2006. I tend to focus on small groups these days and avoid engaging with people I don’t know. Some argue that this defeats the point of a social network. I disagree when such action only generates rage. I especially like your point “Quote-Tweets and pile-ons and instant unpleasant replies mean that any considered conversation is all but impossible.” Agreed.
Once Musk closed his Twitter acquisition ten days ago, I began nurturing my Mastodon presence, connecting with a few people and seeing a big influx in recent days, many of which are escapees from Twitter. So Mastodon is my Plan B but I don’t intend leaving Twitter unless it really does turn into a free-for-all place with hatespeech masquerading as free speech. Or if Trump gets in again, whichever comes first.
Thanks for your article, I enjoyed reading it.
I’ve found this explanation that puts it all into context.
Mastodon isn’t just Mastodon… it’s a tiny part of the greater Fediverse. So Mastodon is many servers that can talk to each other but there are other apps that analogues to popular apps, too Instead of Instagram, there’s Pixelfed- They all use ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon – You can *follow* posts on Pixelfed FROM YOUR MASTODON ACCOUNT (And vice versa!) Not only do Mastodon accounts follow other Mastodon accounts on other servers, they can follow other accounts on other applications that use ActivityPub. It’s like if your Twitter account could follow someone’s Instagram account. This is the power of the greater **Fediverse**!!! More info: https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/ Sample List: * Facebook analogue: [Friendica](https://friendi.ca) * Instagram analogue: [Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.org) * YouTube analogue: [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org) * Spotify analogue: [Funkwhale](https://funkwhale.audio) * MeetUp analogue: [Mobilizon](https://joinmobilizon.org) * Reddit analogue: [Lemmy](https://join-lemmy.org) * Podcasting analogue: [Castopod](https://castopod.org) * GoodReads analogue: [BookWyrm](https://joinbookwyrm.com) * Soundcloud analogue: [Reel2Bits](https://reel2bits.org) * Twitter/Mastodon analogue: [Pleroma](https://pleroma.social/) * Twitter/Mastodon analogue: [Misskey](https://join.misskey.page/en-US/)
Thank you everyone. I’m going to try Mastodon. Out of interest (left Twitter ages ago) and because it will annoy Elon Musk.
The perverse deployment of the word “instance”, which an outsider and native-born speaker of English cannot hope to interpret without stepping inside Mastodon to investigate, gives it the air of a cult, like Scientology for instance.
And as for “Lex-odus”, let it be consigned to the same pit of oblivion as its equally abominable predecessors, “tele-vision” and “homo-sexual”.
In this instance (see what I did there?) “instance” is a computer science technical term and does not belong to Mastodon. I think it originated with Object Orientated Programming, where each object can have multiple instances. So you won’t have to sign up to Mastodon to find out more.
I think “Lexodus” is inspired.
Computer science technical terms have a tendency to pervert. British people frequently refer to TV “programs”, and in a class-room of a computing department of a secondary school I read a message on the blackboard that “mouses must be tidied away at the end of the lesson”.
There’s a helpful guide to moving from Twitter to Mastodon here:
https://uk.pcmag.com/social-media/140040/how-to-leave-twitter-for-mastodon
I’m still waiting for my account to be approved, after several days, probably because the instance I signed onto is overrun with refugees from Twitter. Might look for an alternative instance, so I can get on and actually try Mastodon out for real.