Fediverse and Mastodon: Social Media, but in a Good Way: Sustainable, Healthy, Collaborative, ...

• Update 2024-07-13: Added censorship which causes narrow bubbles and hate.

The Fediverse is an umbrella term for a federated set of social networking services that are able to exchange messages among each other.

You already know another federated Internet service: email. With your business email account, you can exchange mails with people using other email providers such as GMail, yahoo, hotmail, and so forth. It does not matter if your email partner is hosted on the very same email server as you. This is because both email services are able to talk to each other via an open standard.

Same as with email, you can decide to run your own server for a Fediverse service. Those servers are also called "instances". For instance, the instance graz.social (disclaimer: I'm affiliated) is running a few Fediverse services for our local community.

The most prominent Fediverse service is called Mastodon which is similar to X/Twitter. There are other Fediverse services you can imagine as free alternatives to some commercial networks:

... and many more!

I think that you definitely should start using free Social Network services from the Fediverse. Maybe as an additional network for starters. But then you really should think of stopping to use the commercial ones for multiple reasons.

And this is the story why this would be a very wise decision by you in the long run:

• The Main Arguments in Short
  • … for the impatient
• Downsides of Typical Commercial Social Networks
  • … and why Mastodon is an improvement (or not)
• Downsides of Mastodon
  • … let's be honest
• Things You Don't Get Elsewhere That Easily
  • … just to give you some ideas
• Summary

It's a long article. But you are free to skip sections that are not of interest to you right now. This article is not - and will never be - a complete guide for beginners. The main goal of this article is to express my arguments why it is a good idea to use Mastodon as your main social network and probably stop using all the others as they are unhealthy and manipulative.

In my opinion, the most important reasons for Fediverse in general and for Mastodon in particular are:

• No algorithm decides what you should see and what not.
  • Your personal time-line consists only of messages of the accounts and hashtags you are following and the messages that got boosted by the accounts you are following. Nothing else. No manipulation. No filtering except your personal ones.
• There is no endless scrolling!
  • You are finished when you have read everything from the accounts you're following.
• You are in control of your time-lines.
  • You can mute or block accounts.
    • You can report accounts to the instance moderators.
  • You can mute or block keywords or hashtags.
  • You can follow hashtags.
• No advertisement.
  • At least most instances I know don't allow most commercial advertisements.
  • You can not pay somebody in order to broadcast advertisements to people's personal timelines.
• No lock-in effect.
  • You can switch to a different Mastodon instance within minutes without losing your followers.
  • Since the standards are open, you are free to choose any (mobile) client you like. This is a huge plus!
• You are not affected by dark patterns or even mass surveillance.
• Mastodon is run by humans for humans.

That's why I love Mastodon so much more than any other social network I was using before.

I collected a list of disadvantages of common, algorithm-based, commercial social media networks from Wikipedia. In the next sections I want to elaborate on each of those disadvantages and how I compare them to the situation with Mastodon, my only social network these days.

It's not just me. Many experts came to the conclusion that we need to be careful, should not let kids into social networks before they get violent and even some experts want warning labels similar to drugs to prevent health damage.

You may skip this sections if you already have an idea why commercial social networks are bad for you and Mastodon seems to be a good replacement.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Trustworthiness and reliability as of 2024-06-16.

Most arguments here are also true for Mastodon. However, because of the absence of any algorithm that pushes certain content, this effect is "limited" to the human side only.

I'd say that this is as bad as with other social networks or slightly better. As always: check your sources before you promote content anywhere.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Data harvesting and data mining as of 2024-06-16.

Harvesting of user-generated data is not that easy as for commercial social networks. With bots collecting data over multiple instances, it is also possible within the Fediverse. Everything you post on Mastodon should be considered public of some sort.

Probably as bad as with other networks.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Critique of activism as of 2024-06-16.

Same as with other social networks.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Content ownership as of 2024-06-16.

You have much better control over your content on Mastodon. For example, you can decide that Mastodon posts are deleted after a certain period of time.

I do see a clear plus here on the Mastodon side.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Privacy as of 2024-06-16.

It's important to know that Mastodon is not some service you should use for messaging that requires high level of privacy and security. There is something like private messages ("Mentioned people only") but that is not end-to-end encrypted. In any case, malicious server administators are able to see anything you do within Mastodon.

For private conversation, please refer to the Messenger-Matrix and choose wisely.

That doesn't mean that there is no privacy in Mastodon at all. You can take action to add some privacy for your account.

In comparison to other social networks, Mastodon is more honest with the level of security and privacy.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Addiction as of 2024-06-16.

There is much research out there on the negative health effects of social networks.

Since there is no secret algorithm involved with Mastodon and there is no endless scrolling, I would argue that Mastodon has many positive effects here. If you reached the end of new messages within your time-line, it's the end. No need to spend more time within your Mastodon client. Just continue with your life and re-check later when you have more messages to check.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Debate over use by young people as of 2024-06-16.

I would say that some negative aspects apply for Mastodon as well. Again, because of the absence of algorithms and endless scrolling, the worst negative aspects are missing in Mastodon.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Censorship as of 2024-06-16.

Each Mastoon instance has a set of rules. You can check this set of rules before you create an account on that instance. If you are not happy with this set of rules, you may switch to a different instance (without losing your followers) any time.

Therefore, censorship is not a global issue with Mastodon. It's a local community issue with respect to server rules. Furthermore, each and every user is able to filter his/her timeline using keywords as well. You might interpret that as censorship but I don't see it that way.

Be aware, there is also another type of censorship: by filtering the content according to your personal bubble, you only see confirming posts and information that might drag you down a problematic rabbit hole. Many people think that this is one of the major problems of our modern society, causing all sorts of extremism and hate.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Decentralization and open standards as of 2024-06-16.

Well, commercial social networks are centralized and don't follow open standards. The services on the Fediverse do. A clear win for the Fediverse here.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Deplatforming as of 2024-06-16.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I deeply understand the term "deplatforming". The thing that comes to my mind is that with the ability to block whole instances, Mastodon instance administrators are able to do more harm than necessary when trying to block bad content of some sort. Therefore, blocking whole instances should only be the last and most drastic action taken against bad actors.

I'm referring to Wikipedia: Extremist groups as of 2024-06-16.

Of course, any open network can be used by some bad guys as well. However, most instance rule sets contain common rules against extremist content and therefore instances of extremist groups are likely to be blocked by normal instances.

Furthermore, German scientists found more proof that social media is bad for our democracy. Although not mentioned directly, the algorithm seems to be the root cause for this negative result.

Of course, there are also some downsides of Mastodon you need to be aware of. In this section, I'm mentioning some of them and I try to give some tips.

There is no general full text search in Mastodon. But you can search for hashtags or users in any case.

If you want to make sure that your content reaches people who do not follow your account, you should use hashtags for the most important keywords in your post.

Since you can follow not only accounts but also hashtags, this is a neat way of identifying interesting new accounts to follow.

Some instances do have a local search feature activated. If you are using such an instance, you can use a very cool search query language to find stuff that is already stored on your local instance either because it was published there or it got cached.

Yes, commercial social networks do have much more users and unfortunately, this won't change any time soon.

However, according to my personal experience and many Mastodon postings by companies and organizations, even with a much lower number of followers, the interactions in the Fediverse are of higher quality and sometimes even higher quantity.

When I was still using Twitter and Mastodon in parallel, I had many more followers on Twitter. To my surprise, I had much more interaction on Mastodon. Therefore, don't just look at follower numbers, do also take into account the quality of connections on social networks.

Until X/Twitter stopped providing services, there were a set of cool web pages that were able to identify Mastodon-accounts or people you were following on Twitter. This was a great service. But then, some weird billionaire decided that this should be stopped. Imagine why.

New users might get the impression that Mastodon is too complex. I'd argue that a certain amount of complexity is good, because it also gives you more freedom to make this the perfect social network for you and your personal set of requirements.

To my surprise, this is one of the most mentioned issues with Mastodon: people are overwhelmed when they find out that they need to choose an instance.

This is one of the reasons why mastodon.social, the instance of the Mastodon founder, is - by far - the largest instance when it comes to registered accounts. This is not always a good thing. I'd recommend to look around and find a medium or small sized instance that fits your personal taste. Follow this recommendations and check various instances and their rules. Web pages like that are really a good starting point.

And even when you found out that your initial instance choice was not perfect, don't worry: just switch to a different instance and take all of your followers to the new one. This can be done within minutes.

If you do fear that an instance might have problematic blocking rules, you can even check out services like that to get some insight here. Another plus for openess!

This might be a subtle topic for most people. I wrote about that also in my article where I argue against using web forums.

Different people have different requirements. The classic example here are blind people. They depend on user interfaces which work great with screen readers.

But you don't have to be a blind person in order to have preferences on different interfaces. Some people prefer using Mastodon in the web browser, some prefer using text interfaces, some mobile devices, some prefer using an integrated Mastodon client within their advanced productivity environment and so forth.

There is a large set of Mastodon clients to choose from.

If your favorite mobile client is not maintained any more, you can switch to a different one easily. With commercial services, you are mostly locked-in to a one-client-fits-all monoculture.

When writing your first posts, you will be confronted with some options how to do that as well.

• Visibility/privacy
  • I'd recommend to go with "public" for any new message until you find you want to change that for certain messages.
  • I also recommend that you select "unlisted" when replying to any message so that only people interested in this thread of messages do see your reply. There are feature requests like that who wants to change/automate stuff like that.
• Language: although the home timeline is not filtered according to your language settings in the account preferences (yet), you really should select the post language accordingly for many reasons. If you post in multiple languages, you really should check before posting.
• Surveys: although the number of options for survey answers is limited, this is a very neat feature in my opinion. It's not that hard to use in my opinion.
• CW or content warnings: While this is certainly a great thing to have, many people have very different opinions on how to use this feature. I wrote about my point of view here. I rarely use CWs myself.

In order to curate what's going to get on your home timeline, you do not only have "follow this account" or "follow that hashtag".

If you, e.g., do not like what certain accounts are posting related to a hashtag you're following, you have several options to get rid of those messages:

• mute an account
• block an account
• report an account
• setup a keyword filter
• use the language filter: Because of this open issue, you can't filter your home timeline according to posting languages yet. However, this works in other timelines.

I've mentioned the term timeline many times already. Basically, there are at least three timelines for each account:

• Home:
  • postings from accounts you follow
  • postings that were boosted by accounts you follow (similar to re-tweets)
  • postings that contain hashtags your follow
• Local
  • postings from all accounts of your instance: that's like a local village square and most probably the most important reason to use a particular instance.
• Federated
  • combines local timeline and all public posts from other instances that "talk" to your instance

In addition to that and particular if you choose to use any form of advanced interface, you can have as many additional timelines as you want. You can have timelines showing posts with a particular hashtag or timelines that contain posts related to a list. My personal preference is to either use a hashtag timeline or follow a hashtag but not doing both at the same time.

As I mentioned above, people have different opinions on how to use content warning, choose different visibility options for posting and so forth.

Sometimes, this results in more or less tedious discussions.

Some usage patterns evolve over time. Some will be controversial forever.

Well, humans.

Your instance doesn't "see" all postings on the Fediverse. It's more complicated than that but basically it sees all local postings and all postings by accounts that got followed by anybody on your local instance.

With each local account following a remote account from a new instance, your instance gets more and more postings that are shown, e.g., in the federated timeline.

Don't worry, if you paste any Mastodon url or user account in your search, you will find that post or user, independent of the cached data of your instance.

Yes, this is a huge plus but also a disadvantage: you can't push your account by spending money. If you do maintain a Mastodon account for an organization, you need to make your account popular by providing good content and not by paying for more visibility through an algorithm.

If you need or want to get more insight, how other people are interacting with your Mastodon posts, you do have that many tools at hand at the moment. This can change over time, when more and more services provide analytical dashboards for accounts.

Here are some links:

• MastoMetrics → I do like that for a quick overview.
• https://github.com/muesli/mastotool
• https://github.com/blackle/mastodon-data-viewer.py
• Top 10,000 Mastodon Accounts → from time to time, it's interesting to scroll through some ratings.
  • This ranks just according to number of followers.
  • In 2023, my account was once in the top 2000 worldwide. ;-)

Remember the blue button at Twitter that verified accounts had? Well, there is a much better mechanism for people using Mastodon. Instead of paying a company to verify or waiting to get verified, you can verify your Mastodon profile by linking from web pages you control.

This way, you can see on my Mastodon profile that it belongs to a person who is controlling my web page: Karl-Voit.at

I did this also for my Github account.

Learn more about how to do this on this page and that page.

Mastodon is not in its final state. It will never be. Therefore, there are many things people would like to have but are not there yet. The important thing is "yet", since Mastodon is based on open source software and anybody is able to contribute.

Futhermore, there are some bugs waiting to be fixed.

Here is a list of things I personally do follow:

• Non-working language filter in home timeline
• Web interface doesn't remember last position
• I'd like to be able to hide my own messages
• Some people would like to add accounts to lists without following them
• Hashtag completion often is polluted with hashtags containing typos
• I would like to be able to scheduled messages in the web interface (and not just in Tusky)
• I'd love to have synced web columns across web clients of different computers (if not also Tusky)
• There could be an auto-language selection when posting.
• More tools for large audience accounts

With Mastodon being so open and accessible, there is a ton of stuff to discover either within the Mastodon web interface or for various third party clients or with external services that provide additional functionality.

Here are just a few examples.

You can follow Mastdon accounts via feeds. For example you can follow https://graz.social/@publicvoit by just adding .rss to its URL: https://graz.social/@publicvoit.rss

This also works for following hashtags: the feed for the hashtag https://mastodon.online/tags/pim is https://mastodon.online/tags/pim.rss

More on the versatility of feeds can be found here.

External services are able to provide tools to extend your user experience of Mastodon. Mastodon.tools as a few of them such as a service to schedule your posts. As always: be careful where you provide access to your account either through username/password (alarming!) or via tokens.

When you follow an account of a person who is posting interesting stuff but the posts about soccer are of no interest to you, you can easily create filters that hide soccer-related posts in your timeline. I do have maybe filters for over twenty words or phrases.

Mastodon does avoid many negative aspects of the commercial, algorithm-driven social networks that cause so many issues in our society.

People using Mastodon are in control over their account and their timelines.

What I like about Mastodon is that you can easily discover smaller blogs and more personal stuff that gets lost in the mass output of the usual social media feed.

You will notice that using Mastodon is different in many things. Most of the time, you will notice that it is a better approach for the long run. Therefore, it is a good idea to start with a Mastodon account on any instance, play around and meet new people over the Internet.

One important aspect is that Mastodon instances are run by humans who care. If you do report accounts, those issues are checked by those humans. You can directly contact your instance administrators and have a chat. You can even spend a few bucks to compensate for their hosting cost and you can buy them a beer. Get involved and be nice to each other.