Coming right out and saying it, Mastodon is no replacement for Twitter. I make sure to share this twitter thread with anyone that is even remotely considering the platform.
THREAD: In light of so many folks moving to Mastodon/the Fediverse, i want to re-up a couple of threads i did last year about safety and other issues. None of these have gone away, and the increased volume is gonna make them worse, not better.
— ???????? (@adrienneleigh) August 16, 2018
Joe Steel’s longer take on it is pretty dang good and he’s much more open-minded about the entire concept, so his post is definitely worth a read. His opening take sums it up pretty well:
The short version is that Mastodon clones features of Twitter with open source software that can be run on any server. Those servers talk to each other and form a larger world than any one server could. The default place most people land is mastodon.social but they have halted admissions because of the large influx of people leaving Twitter at the same time. You can join mastodon.cloud or any other server. Since your server can talk to the others, and you can move your account to another one, there’s no immediate pressure. There’s a timeline which is functionally like Twitter – or at least how it was back when it was chronological. You can mute, block, follow, etc.
I’m not sure what to think, just yet. I have an account set up somewhere but I don’t remember anything about it–a problem I’m sure would be solved by digging into emails.