What is Mastodon and how it works

A new social structure that exploits all the characteristics of a network

I recently discovered Mastodon, a decentralized network with an interface very similar to that of Twitter, but which has potential unattainable by any other social network because it exploits all the features of the internet and focuses them around the user.

On the web it is still very difficult to understand the concept of Mastodon, so now we will try to explain it in the simplest way possible, but first let’s take a step back.

The social network to date

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the social networks we all know. We will leave aside the union of Facebook and Instagram, we continue to consider them as separate families in order to better express the concept. There are also other social networks, but put them aside, let’s take into consideration the 3 just mentioned and ask ourselves a question: What do they as similar?

Each of the social networks we mentioned has its own (unique) server, with its own rules and users. A Twitter user cannot communicate with a Facebook user, and a Facebook user cannot decide to delete their account by transferring all their past to an Instagram account.

The timeline for each of them is unique, and you are led to read only the profiles you follow. Consequently, although the 3 social networks each boast millions of active users, if your profile has (let’s assume) 300k followers, when you add content it is seen by 300k followers plus any re-shares, not by all the millions of users.

Then, if the social network decides that your content does not comply with the terms of use, it deletes it. You can try to clarify with the administrative office of the social network itself to have it re-accepted, but if they decide that that content is not accepted, that content will not be published, and if you do not want to lose your followers you will adapt to their rules.We don’t talk about when they block your account.

If the social server goes down, all the millions of users cannot connect, or if a government decides to censor it, the citizens of that country will no longer be able to use that social network.To top it off with the icing on the cake: All data stored on a single server is data that can be sold to any highest bidder.

This is the current idea of ​​social networking that we have, centralized social.

Mastodon and the fediverse

Now I’ll explain why you need to seriously consider the idea of ​​being part of Mastodon (or in any case of the fediverse).

Mastodon isn’t really a social network. Mastodon is a federated network. This is made up of many small independent servers, which have independent and different domains, names, rules and users, with the particularity that these servers can communicate with each other. Each server is called an Instance. When you sign up for Mastodon, you are actually signing up for a Mastodon Instance.

You must therefore choose the instance you want to be part of. There are many instances, these can be public or restricted, and each of them can decide if it wants to be part of the entire Mastodon ecosystem allowing connections with other instances.

Once the first login is performed, we will find a graphic interface almost identical to that of Twitter, with the only difference that the Tweet is called Toot, the Retweet is called Boost, and that instead of a timeline we find 3 of them, thus identified

  • Home: is the main timeline, the one we all know, and that is the one that shows all the content of all the profiles that follow.
  • Local: is the timeline of the instance. Everything that is written in the server by all users ends up in here, and of people who follow that people who do not follow (except for those that we’ve blocked or muted). This means that even being new and having 0 followers, all those who are registered on our server, we read it in this timeline.
  • Federation: this is the timeline of the federation. When a user on our server following a user on another server, all that the user of the other server the public ends in this timeline. If a user “alien” we are not interested we can stop or quiet them down, or we can silence the entire instance foreign.

Basically, if, for example, I subscribe to server 1 which has 2000 registered users, and I am followed only by one user (i.e. I have only one follower) in server 2 which has 5000 registered users, Mastodon still gives me the possibility to show mine content to 7000 people (plus any re-sharing), despite having only one follower.

But I can not only communicate with users of different instances, I can also export all data with a backup, all publications and images, completely delete my account from an instance and register it on another server (if desired, also configuring a redirect). This is because if maybe I see that the rules of my instance are not compatible with my way of using the social network (for example, I practice spam), I am not obliged to stay there so as not to lose the Mastodon audience.On the contrary, I physically move to another server while continuing to have the possibility of being followed by the instance I have just abandoned. The system also provides a series of notifications that will reach my followers informing them that I have changed servers.

The transfer of an account can take place in two ways, that is or automatically, using the dedicated transfer function, where it will be possible to specify which will be the new nick and the new server, and it will be our own server to organize the transfer of their followers.Or it will be possible to simply set a redirect that will appear in the header of the profile to those who will view it

or manually, where it will be possible to export all the data of your account, from the media, to the toots, to the followers, the lists, the list of blocked and silenced, and all the bookmarks. The toot and media download, however, is slightly cumbersome as to obtain it you need to request your own archive, which will allow the download of a package.tar.gz which includes all the toots in json format, all the multimedia files that we have uploaded to our profile, the avatar, the profile picture and the other configurations

subsequently, in the new account, it will be possible to import the single lists among the followed, the blocked, the silenced and the bookmarks.

The possibility of importing both all the media and all the toots is missing, as if we transferred a ten-year account with millions of contents we would only risk burying the new server that is hosting us with the massive import, and the followers, as if we were this possibility each of us could invent a list of followers and import it through a csv file. However, as already mentioned, with the transfer those who follow us will be notified, and therefore they will be the one to follow you back again.

To make you understand the power of the fediverse, I was able to perform a transfer from an instance of Mastodon (a federated social application) to an instance of Pleroma (another federated social application other than Mastodon but which is able to converse with it).

Furthermore, the servers are not managed by large administrations, but by people like us with whom we can safely talk to each other, and consequently we have the possibility to humanly clarify any kind of misunderstanding.

It must also be said that with a subdivision of users on multiple servers, there is no government that censors or an agency that buys our data that it takes, because an agency pays for millions of users, not for the few thousand content on a single server, and in the event of censorship, users can move to an instance that the Government may not be able to touch because perhaps in another country, and all without losing their publications.

This is called decentralized social.

We have no sponsorships that end up in our timelines, and all posts from all users are displayed in chronological order, with no algorithm favoring one user over another.

To briefly summarize, if Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were instances of Mastodon, users of all 3 social networks could talk to each other, and would be free to move their account from Facebook to Twitter without losing any photos and any publications.This is the concept of federation, or rather of Fediverso.

Have I convinced you?

To participate or even just to try it we have to go to joinmastodon.org, and press Get Started

We will be given the opportunity to filter the servers recommended by Mastodon based on the category and language concerned. I want to clarify that the instances are not only those within these filters, but they are still an excellent step to start and then eventually move to another instance.

We are on mastodon.uno, the Mastodon Italia instance whose rules allow clean use by combating spam and referral links, but it is also possible to register or move to mastodon.bida.im.

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