Mastodon, now the top refuge from Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter, requires effort

Under Elon Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop stewardship of Twitter, the site that one of its founders once called  the pulse of the planet” has developed a severe case of atrial fibrillation.

But even before the quixotic billionaire over-leveraged his holdings to buy the social network, it was already known by too many of its users as a “hellsite.” Women, LGBTQ community members, people of color and others considered vulnerable have long been targets of abuse from legions of jerks and sociopaths. Misinformation has rampant.

Sure, Twitter has tools to help control what users see and who can communicate with them, but sickos bent on getting their jollies by making others miserable find a way through the defenses.

It wasn’t always this way. In its formative years, circa 2007-2010, Twitter was a wonderful place to be, where people shared what they were having for lunch, but also shared knowledge and life experiences.

The biggest knock against it back then was that it was too easy to tell others what you were up to. It seemed self-indulgent to the point that, in an April 2007 column, I referred to it as part of “the narcissystem.” Reading that column today (see houstonchronicle.com/earlytwitter), my cautions about living life too online seem quaint.

Covering and participating in Twitter during those early days, I watched a community come to life, developing its own etiquette, mores and processes. It was kinder and gentler back then. In this era of tech giants and social networks with millions and billions of users, it seemed like we might never again get to watch something akin to young Twitter bloom.

The chaos at Twitter has many users seeking an alternative, and at the moment the No. 1 candidate is Mastodon, a social platform that looks a lot like Twitter, but with big differences.

The most important difference: Mastodon is built on open-source software and is not just one site but many, and each is known as an “instance.” You can sign up with any of them and still follow and communicate with people on other instances. Collectively, all the instances are known by the geeky moniker of “the Fediverse.”

But not all members of the Fediverse play well with each other. Proponents of decentralized social networks like Twitter and Facebook love a platform like Mastodon because no one person controls it. But that’s both a good thing and a bad thing.

Each Mastodon server is overseen by the person or people who set it up. They craft the rules for what happens there, and they can make changes to how it works. That includes whether or not to welcome other instances’ members.

In April, when Musk indicated he wanted to buy Twitter and threatened to upend its content moderation policies — something which, so far, has not actually happened — I wrote about a potential alternative called CounterSocial (see houstonchronicle.com/countersocial). It uses a variant of the Mastodon software, but the creator of the open-source software and the system operator of CounterSocial disagreed over the latter’s blocking of six nations that host troll and bot farms. CounterSocial is an island unto itself as a result.

Another example of disunity in the Fediverse: An instance that caters to journalists, journa.host, has been blocked by dozens of other instances. In a story at the Columbia Journalism Review website, Mathew Ingram writes that the operators of some instances object to the way journalists behave on Twitter, and seek to prevent that from happening on their fiefdoms. From the CJR story:

“The administrator of an academic server wrote that the journa.host server is ‘willing to host some extremely scumbag journalist types and we don’t need to be on their radar.’ Another said that ‘reporters mining social media for fodder without the authors’ knowledge or consent is a plague on every other social media platform, and I think (the Mastodon universe) should nip it in the bud.’”

When Ingram’s story was first published, there were 45 instances blocking journa.host. As I write this column, that number has swollen to well over 100. By the time you read this, it will likely be more.

Now, given that there are thousands of Mastodon instances out there, this is an inconsequential number of “defederations,” as being unlinked from Fediverse instances is known. But CounterSocial and journa.host are two of the high-profile ones; there are likely more we don’t know about.

In addition, Mastodon remains somewhat user-unfriendly. Depending on how each instance is set up, some look like a single-column Twitter feed, while others resemble Tweetdeck, the multi-column “power user” interface run by Twitter. You can change the default view in the settings (I recommend the multi-column view, and switch from dark to light mode initially).

If you are thinking about establishing an outpost on Mastodon, you first must figure out which instance to call your home – you can find lists at joinmastodon.org or instances.social – and then go through a somewhat clunky onboarding process. Some instances catering to specific interests may require you to apply before you’ll be admitted.

Then there’s the issue of finding who to follow. Some of your Twitter friends may have made the leap, but Mastodon has no built-in way to find them. There’s a search feature, but it’s slow and doesn’t always find who or what you’re looking for.

To fix this problem, there are several websites that will connect to your Twitter account and try to find matches for your follows on the Fediverse. Typically, they require that Twitter users have added their Mastodon handles to their Twitter profiles. I like Debirdify (pruvisto.org/debirdify/) and Fedifinder (fedifinder.glitch.me). Debirdify will generate a spreadsheet that you can then feed into your account settings page on Mastodon and automatically follow the matches.

And if your eyes glazed over at that last paragraph, you see the challenge the platform faces. Twitter – and the other big social networks – have been years making their services friendly and seamless, hiding the geeky parts. You can see the downside in a centralized platform when someone like Elon Musk takes over, or when Mark Zuckerberg plays fast-and-loose with your privacy on Facebook. But the benefit is that these big, centralized operations have the resources to make it easier to use for everyone.

But if you’re willing to do some work, and learn a still-evolving interface, a place like Mastodon can be fun. In reality, though, it’s not Twitter, and it likely never will be.

dsilverman@outlook.com

@dsilverman@mastodon.social

twitter.com/dsilverman