The instance, the actual server you join, doesn’t matter much for the core Twitter-like experience people are looking for. If you join a music-themed instance, you know that anyone else on that server shares the same interests as you. There may be other ways that server hosts that will allow you to connect with your peers there, but again, for the core Twitter-like service, that doesn’t matter much.
Other instances aligned around different themes may require you to prove you qualify to join. A server dedicated to academic research in a given field may want to see what papers you’ve published. Others may want more stringent proof that you are who you say you are, and that you will live up to a stricter code of conduct than other servers. Lots of servers are come-one-come-all with only the standard agreements around conduct.
Once you’ve got an account for a specific instance, you then have access to the wider world of toots from every server. Remember, you don’t care about what instance someone is on, you only care about the actual people (accounts) you follow. And those accounts can be as widely varied as what you have on Twitter, of course granting Twitter the substantial head start in users.
Maybe another way to look at it is to think about email. No one cares whether you get your email through a Gmail instance, a Hotmail instance (well), a Mac.com instance, whatever. They just want to know how to reach you. The servers across the internet make sure you get the things that are intended for you. Mastodon is like that too. Mastodon is an open network of servers following a protocol to distribute toots. Twitter is a closed platform to show you ads and just enough tweets to keep you coming back.
In addition to instances not being like an account, the two instances/servers (Join mastodon seem to have changed terminology) are just the ones listed in the place you looked, which I assume was the Join Mastodon page. There a lots of servers that aren’t listed there.
Why they specifically list metalhead.club (which has 4.1k registered and 3.7k active users) and ravenation.club (17k active users) I do not know.
There’s also apparently a mastodon offshoot especially for sharing and listening to music and audio called https://funkwhale.audio/ Since it’s based on the same code there is some interoperability, though I don’t know how it works since it’s not something I’m particularly interested in.
Thanks, this is helpful as an explanation. Could you explain also how accounts work? If I understand correctly, an account is always connected to a specific instance, and you can only move it to another instance, but you cannot connect a single account to multiple instances. This tracks, since an account posts in a specific instance so should be connected to one.
But are you allowed to create multiple accounts for multiple instances so that - by account switching - you can post in multiple instances for different topics? This still seems cumbersome as it forces you to switch accounts whenever you want to post a different kind of subject.
Depending on the instance or server, you’re probably allowed to post whatever you want, as long as it’s within their content guidelines. There are plenty of general interest ones.
Okay. So a server/instance is a bit like your primary community which can monitor the boundaries of permissible posts according to the standards of that server, but need not restrict itself to specific topics. And you pick a server/community where you feel comfortable as your home base. A bit like SDMB.
Only through the server you also have a (read-only?) window on other servers. So that is more like Twitter.
Possibly also the posts from some servers might be invisible, I’m not sure how that is decided.
Now I think about it, a disadvantage of picking the ‘wrong’ server would be that your posts only appear as local to your own server, so would not as easily be picked up by people on other servers (only through hash tags).
Unless you join a server that is specifically limited to only one set of topics, you’re free to post whatever you want more or less. Imagine a party where you and a couple friends with a shared interest are chatting in a corner. That’s your instance. But at any time, you could also talk to anyone else at the party on any other topic, up to the point where whatever you’re saying starts to piss people off. You might find that your friends in the corner wander off. Or you might get kicked out of the party altogether. But if you behave civilly, you can chat with your friends as well as anyone else at the party.
I think a quick description of the user experience will be helpful to some.
I have an account on social.coop so my Mastodon id is @username@social.coop
When I open the app (I use Tusky) I can switch between my feed, which just shows stuff posted or boosted (retweeted) by accounts I follow, the local feed, which shows everything posted to social.coop chronologically, or the global feed, which shows everything posted to any mastodon instance that is federated and not blocked by social.coop, unless the poster has marked it somehow (I don’t know exactly how. I haven’t been concerned about it.)
I generally just read my own feed and I follow accounts from a bunch of different instances.
Some big differences from Twitter is that, at least in the app I use and the instance my account is on, posts don’t show how many replies, boosts or likes they have. They’ll show if there are any replies, so one knows to click on it to see if the conversation is interesting, but it only shows whether I have boosted or liked it, so I know I don’t need to do it again.
There are also no promoted posts, no “your friends liked this”, no “trending topics”.
You can search on user names and on hashtags, but you can’t search on other parts of posts.
All of those choices are deliberate to reduce the negative effects of virality and posting for engagement, but it also means you lose the benefits of those, for example seeing that a post has a vibrant conversation attached it without having to click on it.
Just saw Ben Shapiro mentioned in a WaPo opinion piece and realized that, having left twitter, this is the first time in months the odious, little prick has appeared on my radar. That might not be the case for all Mastodon feeds of course, but it’s a benefit of mine I hadn’t even realized until now.
Joined a Mastodon instance last week, and really like it. Haven’t closed out my bird acct yet, but I don’t expect to be around there much longer. I follow a few writers on the bird thing, some of whom are positively panicked, some making the migration, and some who refuse to leave. I expect if you’ve developed your business based on twitter, you’d be worried right about now.
The only thing I’m missing from Twitter are the celebrities I used to follow and some of the parody accounts. My home feed is full of news, pics and memes, just like before, but without ads and other garbage.
This comment from the Twitter thread by @filmore sums it up for me:
I had trouble figuring out how to make Twitter work. I’ve had a couple of accounts and have abandoned them because I couldn’t figure them out. No way I’m going to try Mastodon.
Even with the big growth over the last few weeks, Mastodon is still very small. For now, when a celebrity you follow posts something, it doesn’t immediately blow up into hundreds of replies, where your voice will be completely lost.
I’ve seen several celebrities have posts go uncommented for 20+ minutes, which would have made it easier to interact, if I’d had anything interesting to say. (Unlike here, where I try to stay long and uninteresting)
I never got into twitter, because it was all just too much. The thing with Mastodon now is that it proceeds pretty slow. Really a similar pace of new messages as I get for the 20 or so threads I follow here at any given time.
Don’t over think the server thing. Just pick one and join. You can always change later. Then find a few accounts to follow, and see what they have to say. If there’s nobody you’re interested in ahead of time, then look at the local and federated feeds. If somebody says something interesting, folllow them.
Once you’re following a few people, you can watch your feed and see what they say and promote. If it turns out they don’t interest you, stop following.
I was reading on another message board that some of the servers are very careful about protecting their uses from hate speech and such, and whole servers are hidden from each other. Is that much of a thing on Mastodon?
I didn’t use Twitter until the Ukraine war started. Even then it’s only to follow the tweets from the Ukrainian posters (is milblogger the correct term?) that are frequently linked to in the Ukraine war thread. If Mastadon can do the same, then I’d happily switch.
Yes. My feed showed a lengthy discussion this weekend about a new server set up by journalists, how they’d accepted at least one transphobe and whether one should just block it immediately or give them some time to put their house in order.
Gab famously switched to run on a version of mastodon in 2019, but is blocked from most other instances and can’t be accessed through the main mastodon apps.
Well, it does if some servers ban other servers. You don’t want to be on a commonly-banned server, and maybe you have a preference as to how fast your server is to ban other servers.
The good thing is that it’s very easy to change servers. The recommendation I’ve heard and agree with is just pick one, any of the larger ones that have instant signups, then use that to get the lay of the land and figure out if there’s a better place for you. That’s what I did.
Biggest thing I try to keep in mind is that Mastodon is relatively new, and this wave of migration from Twitter is extremely new and that it’s just gonna take a little time for things to settle down. The problem with that journalism server largely came about because of the newness of their admins, people learning things by trial and error the same way most of the rest of us on Mastodon are.