Mastodon, An Alternative To Twitter

Hi, I’m Rick Barron, your host, and welcome to That’s Life, I Swear 

Elon Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 27, 2022. Time to pop the champagne corks and celebrate. What should’ve been a day of celebration has turned into anything but. Currently the state of Twitter is chaotic. Twitter users are jumping ship, various Twitter executives have left [like those who oversaw content moderation and security], and decision-making is shall we say indecisive. Is there another alternative to Twitter? Yes, and its name is Mastodon?

Let’s jump into this.

Courtesy of: The Verge

Elon Musk has been in charge of Twitter for over two weeks. Although, yes, he made his bold entry to Twitter headquarters carrying a sink, those employees still there, and the public at large are still scratching their heads, wondering what direction Elon wants to go. As of now, it’s fair to say we’re all in the dark as to his vision. I’m sure Trump is wondering as well.

Elon slapped some serious cash on the table, completing a $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter! He has struggled to address concerns about a potential proliferation of misinformation and hate speech on the platform. 

Elon has sought to assure advertisers that the platform “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.” That sounds good, but companies are placing their advertising budgets on hold or suspending them until they see where Elon is taking Twitter. Here’s a factoid: Twitter earns about 90 percent of its revenue from advertisers.

The Twitter house is seen from the outside, as being in complete in disarray. 

That said, Elon’s grand vision, if that, has given some Twitter users reason to seek out other alternative social media platforms. A popular site that is gaining traction, more so since Elon took over Twitter, is Mastodon, which has an estimated 4.5 million accounts.

Not to be overshadowed, Musk, tweeted at least three derogatory comments about Mastodon before deleting the posts. Guess he’s afraid of a little competition perhaps. 

Here’s what to know about the social network call Mastodon.

Courtesy of: The Teal Mango

Software developer, Eugen Rochko, launched Mastodon in 2016. 

Mastodon Social is catching some momentum. Get this, more than 70,000 users joined the site the day after Musk finalized his purchase of Twitter!

Now bear this thought in mind. Rochko is the project’s only full-time employee, programming at his home in Germany on a modest €2,400 Euros ($2,400) monthly salary. He’s working 12- to 14-hour days to keep up with the influx in demand, and purchasing more powerful hardware to upgrade Mastodon’s database server.

Eugen sees the site as a “free, open-source decentralized social media platform”, and his vision is that Mastodon to be “a viable alternative to Twitter.” Don’t look at Mastodon as Twitter clone, but rather a completely different and more interesting in terms of concept, structure and the features it provides to the user.

For me the gem with Mastodon in that it’s open sourced. What this means is that that Mastodon’s original source code is publicly available and can be redistributed and changed. People can contribute to the code which in turn supports Mastodon by finding and fixing bugs, adding new features and translating its interface into different languages.

Due to Mastodon being technically open-source, this enables federated social networks, meaning that one corporation does not have control over the Mastodon network or service. Instead, anyone can operate their own server, called an “instance.” 

Other features that draw attraction to Mastodon, is that while Elon Musk wants to open the gates to free-speech initiatives, Mastodon’s is taking a different approach by keeping content such as hate speech and bullying conversations off its platform.

To use Mastodon, you have two options, via a web browser or apps that are available for iPhones and Android devices. As I bring you this episode, there are currently 20 third-party apps developed for access to Mastodon.

So why think about making the switch from Twitter to Mastodon? 

Twitter is what is called a single social network, which means that people sign up for and share content only on Twitter. Another analogy to explain what this means, would be a company office building using single sourcing to employ only one commercial cleaning agency to sterilize the entire building every week. Mastodon is completely different in that they’re built on what is known as a federated platform or Federated architecture, meaning it is a collection of social networks, or servers, if you will, that link together but are owned by different people or groups.

Mastodon is a part of the Fediverse, or federated universe, a group of federated platforms that share communication protocols.

Twitter practice is using algorithms when staging posts. Mastodon on the other hand presents posts in chronological order. What I really love about the Mastodon platform is that it has no ads.

So how does Mastodon support itself. Answer, largely through crowdfunding. Most servers are funded by the people who use them. The servers that Mastodon oversees, such as  Mastodon Social and Mastodon Online — are funded through Patreon, a membership and subscription service platform often used by content creators.

I took a look at the interface of Mastodon and for those who’ve used Twitter, it’s a fair guess you may have used TweetDeck, which bears a strong resemblance to Mastodon’s interface. Although Mastodon visually resembles TweetDeck, its user experience is similar to that of Discord, which is a talking and texting app where people also join servers that have their own cultures and rules.

Courtesy of: Mastodon

Unlike Twitter and Discord, Mastodon does not have the ability to make its users, or the people who create servers, do anything. That includes establishing content moderation, or rules for what posts to keep up and what to take down.

But servers can dictate how they interact with one another — or whether they interact at all in a shared stream of posts. For example, when Gab used Mastodon’s code, Mastodon Social and other independent servers blocked Gab’s server, so posts from Gab did not appear on the feeds of people using those servers.

How do you join Mastodon?

To join Mastodon, you sign up for an account on a server. This website will be home to your account, profile and feeds. Some websites allow immediate registration, while others require an approval or an invitation. There are at least 4,000 independent servers, according to estimates by fediverse.party. Many servers are topical, ranging from one for “all the ravers in the universe” to one for Britain.

Like an email account, your username includes the name of the server itself. For example, a possible username on Mastodon Social would be janedoe@mastodon.social. Think of it like an email address, the first part is your chosen identifier, the second part is the organization that looks after your inbox.

Regardless of which server you sign up with, you can interact with people who use other Mastodon servers, or you can switch to another one. You’ll find the terminology is different from Twitter. Instead of “retweets”, you “boosts” and “toots” instead of tweets.

Setting up your own server is more complicated. You have to host it yourself, which requires a website, a virtual computer system connected to the internet and an email provider. Your computer also needs to install some security protocols and programming languages. With those in hand, you can download Mastodon’s code. 

There are providers dedicated to hosting and running Mastodon servers. The company also has detailed instructions for those interested in setting up their own server, which is not necessary for joining or using Mastodon.

Finding Twitter users can be a taxing effort. If you’re wanting to track down on Mastodon all the people you follow on Twitter, you’ll discover there’s no easy way to do this.

Courtesy of: Digitaltrends

But here’s a tip. You could start searching for those you know, or go back to Twitter and see if they have announced their move. Services like Twitodon allow you to log in with both your Twitter and Mastodon accounts and scan to look for users you follow. But it will only be able to find those users who have also used Twitodon. 

Once you follow a few people you have found from Twitter, you could go through their lists to find others you might know. Good luck.

So, what’s the take away? What can we learn  

I give credit to Elon for having established powerhouses like Telsa and Space X. Both companies were not built over night and required many a late night at the white board, brainstorming their missions, tactics and ultimate goals that spells success. High Fives across the board.

Both companies are very hardware and software related, but Twitter is a whole different beast. I see Elon in a state of being overly intoxicated with his power of success, and all well founded. However, it’s a power where one thinks they’re indispensable and are blind to the fact that they can do anything, I mean anything they feel like. He thinks he can break all the rules on the fly, thumb his nose at the doubters and prove them wrong. 

Elon should stick to what he knows best. It’s great to have grand dreams but it’s like telling a ball player who can hit 70 home runs in one season, makes him highly qualified to be a heart surgeon.

From what I’m seeing happening at Twitter, the ongoing sporadic changes, to only then be undone at the last minute, will result in alienating the Twitter community. His high-profile stumbles and whiplash style decision making, could cause a slow ripple of employees departing to morph into a mass exodus.

That said, take a look at Mastodon. It’s not for everyone but I think you’ll see a viable alternative for the future.

Well, there you go. That’s life, I swear.

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website that you can find on either Apple Podcasts/iTunes or Google Podcasts, for show notes calling out key pieces of content mentioned, and the episode transcript.

As always, I thank you for listening. 

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