Twitter Users Have Caused a Mastodon Meltdown

Interesting quotes from the article that may not be obvious from the headline:

> Some of these growing pains come from users expecting that Mastodon will work with the same ease as products funded by Big Tech companies, but the nature of a volunteer-driven network means Mastodon can’t respond to crises like they do.

> “People are trained not to be patient. We expect to pop in, sign up, and we’re onboarded,” says Robert Gehl, a professor of communication and media studies at York University in Canada, who has studied Mastodon. “This is a little bit more complicated. But in the long run, for people who are interested in a more community-oriented space, I think it is very much worth it.”

> Part of Mastodon’s appeal is in hosting smaller communities, where moderators have rules and can regulate hate speech better than on some larger platforms. But with larger servers overwhelmed, people are applying for and flooding smaller ones, reshaping the communities that have grown there. Still, Stone and fellow cofounder Kev Quirk say they are excited about the diversity of opinion and topics coming in the conversations.

> …

> Mastodon’s meltdown may be short-lived. But that depends largely on instance runners expanding their efforts to host more users, and on users having the patience to navigate the network. The model for decentralized social media isn’t really new—it’s more a return to the old internet. And for some, that’s a welcome change.

> “What’s happening now is causing people to rethink social media,” says Gehl. Mastodon “is kind of designed to adapt, because it’s comprised of all these different servers,” he says. “It just takes a little time to shake out.”

There've been no problems at all on the small Mastodon servers I interact with.

I went to jump ship and was shocked I couldn't register on the flagship instance (mastodon.social). Guess I'll have to wait until the land rush calms down.

This is one you'll want to read past the headline.