But the problem is that it is a social network, that depends on your social network and its embrace of mastodon.
Am i right?
Mastodon, and conceptually others like Gnu Social, are twitter-like alternatives, but that's not fairly telling the full story of their capabilities. These platforms bring with them decentralization benefits like classic email does. Remember when so many people's email addresses were not something like @gmail.com or @hotmail.com? When they used their own domain names (either personal, or for their organization, etc.), such as joe@whatever.net, or jane@something .org, and lived on their own servers, though could still interact - that is, email - people from other domains, servers? Mastodon - and again others like Gnu Social - can, and in fact SHOULD live on separate servers and domains...though still allow for interaction. This is the bigger benefit, and personally, i believe what makes mastodon and other similar platforms pretty cool.
Now, the benefit of decentralization above may not be compelling enough for someone on a personal basis to set up/manage their own server...and for that, there certainly are several "largish" mastodon servers where you could create your own account...and STILL interact with folks on other servers, etc.
I acknowledge that i sound like a salesperson for mastodon - i assure i'm not. I'm just a fan of decentralized platforms, and admit that mastodon's UI is easy to use. But if you're curious, i invite you to start an account, and see for yourself. Worse case, you can always abandon it if you really dislike it. Visit https://joinmastodon.org/ and scroll down to the part that helps you choose which instance to join...if you're stumped, simply join the main/first one (https://mastodon.social)
Cheers!
I tried to quit twitter for Mastodon (because it felt more like an open effort than a facebook-esque megacorp) but I was immediately confused by the distributed thing. I thought it was going to be distributed in terms of how it operated, not in terms of the actual social networks being more or less separated. I understood I could follow people from other instances, but only if the instance was somehow connected to the other instance. This confused me even more. How do I pick an instance without ever running into the risk that interesting person X joins in the future and doesn't pick an instance disconnected from the group of instances I'm in?
Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio.
Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for?
In practice this is not a problem. You can pick any popular instance and it will work with everyone. All instances are connected with each other by default, instances are generally only explicitly "defederated" when they're havens for trolls, racists, etc. Besides, if you're trying to follow someone and the instance is defederated (something I've never run into, by the way), your admin is just a quick message away. Mastodon instances are small and the admins have a low workload, they're typically quite accessible.
>Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio.
>Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for?
The only reason this might be the "wrong" approach is the general lack of big name organizations posting news. Most instances are hostile to companies settling in - Mastodon is for people, not brands. That being said, brands could run their own instances and be federated with anyone who wants to follow them.
That aside, there's no wrong way to use Mastodon. Use it however you want.
You can always join a place where the credo is "we connect with everybody", while people who want a very filtered experience can join places that are a lot more nonchalant about blocking other instances. A lot of people probably do (and want to be in a place that does) something in the middle.
You could even have multiple accounts on different instances that you use in different contexts. Most mobile clients support this more or less well, though the default web UI does not.
It reduces failure risks of a centralized system. This is mitigated by using federated systems (like email) or decentralizing your centralized service (Twitter may be a centralized service, but their servers are, hopefully, decentralized so that an outage in one city doesn't impact them globally).
It reduces the risk of centralized control. If Twitter doesn't like you, you're out. If Facebook doesn't like your fake name, you're out. With Mastodon you could still be booted by a server (censorship), but you can always go to another server and continue there. Or even host your own. It's censorship resistant, not censorship proof.
It allows for local control which may be more suited to your community. Yes, this may mean censorship. But if I'm running a service that is aimed at or includes kids, I should be able to block content not intended for them. Is this censorship? Kind of, my users can't get to the content through me. And my users can't post the content through me. But they are certainly free to use other services that don't include those controls. And a decentralized system like Mastodon is better for this than Twitter. Twitter blocks a user? They have no practical recourse, they're out of the system. mastodon.jtsummers.blah blocks a user? They go to mastodon.gfodor.blah which has laxer policies.
If you want to be absolutely uncensored you are free to join one of the several instances that claim they are focused on "free speech". But everyone else who runs a Mastodon instance is free to block those servers from federating with them when it turns out that "free speech" mostly consists of behaving like Cartman from "South Park".
Or host your own. Your instance, your rules.
Of course, other instances are still free to block you.
The probably more important part is that it allows instances to follow national laws better and conform to their culture (see: Japan) instead of having to conform to Silicon Valley culture.
I liked twitter even with the short comings. It's like a big irc room. But it's not going the right way it seems. Maybe people will migrate (happened beforeà)