
Mastodon – an open source alternative to Twitter - PleaseHelpMe
https://mastodon.social/about
======
daveid
Perhaps it would be better to submit
[https://joinmastodon.org](https://joinmastodon.org) instead of the flagship
instance. The project homepage has links to all the info as well as a
directory of servers (instances), which might spread out new users better.

~~~
j_s
When did the 'flagship instance' begin accepting new users again? I wonder how
long it will last this time, and whether or not this HN post will affect that!

Of all the random strangers hosting the service, I waited until I could get
onto the instance hosted by the actual project itself; the bus factor feels
higher, and the account suspension process less arbitrary.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170406103653/https://mastodon....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170406103653/https://mastodon.social/about)
(April 2017)

 _Due to exceptionally high traffic, registrations on this instance are closed
until quality of service can be assured for existing users. Choose one of the
various other public instances to sign up!_

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170806214711/https://mastodon....](https://web.archive.org/web/20170806214711/https://mastodon.social/about)
(August 2017)

 _Given that this is most shared instance, to preserve the ideals of
decentralization we have closed sign ups in favour of spreading new users
through the various alternative instances — you get the same network wherever
you sign up. Click below to find one:_

~~~
kmfrk
Gargron closed it off during its peak, not because of the load, but because
mastodon.social became too synonymous with Mastodon proper, so he forced
people to go to other instances so everyone wouldn't be in the same basket of
eggs.

A few months later, I think mastodon.social has been fairly open to signups,
especially now that we've got all these French and Japanese instances up and
running.

------
ColinWright
For people who want to know more, I wrote this:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThinkingAboutMastodon.html?HN_...](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThinkingAboutMastodon.html?HN_20170910)

Submitted it here ...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14626958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14626958)

... but it got very little attention. In fact, checking my logs only about 20
people even clicked through.

Perhaps people are genuinely not interested. Attention fatigue?? Who knows?

Edit: I should add that I'm here:
[https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo](https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo)

[https://mathstodon.xyz](https://mathstodon.xyz) is very quiet, but building
slowly.

~~~
aqsalose
I believe it's quite random whether a link trends on HN or not, even if other
links about same topic had got a quite large number of upvotes in past. Cool
visualizations and engaging title helps, but isn't a guarantee. Maybe also the
time of the day makes a difference (though I have no idea what would be the
best timezone to optimize for popularity).

------
not_max
I am a huge advocate for Mastodon. It is worth remembering that nearly all of
the value for the users of a social network comes from other users. Most of
Twitter's defining features -- retweets, hashtags, and @ mentions -- were
invented not by Twitter's employees, but by its users:

[https://qz.com/135149/the-first-ever-hashtag-reply-and-
retwe...](https://qz.com/135149/the-first-ever-hashtag-reply-and-retweet-as-
twitter-users-invented-them/)

As a result, building services like this in a distributed way a la email seems
much more appropriate. Why let Twitter greedily monetize your content?

~~~
cyberpunk0
Talking about mentioning people and retweets (ie forwarding) like they are
grand monolithic features just blows them up to insane proportions. These
aren't anything new or special, if you list them as core "features" then you
have a terrible product with more marketing bullshit than quality

------
newscracker
I'm looking forward to platforms that are decentralized as well as allow rich
media content (photos, videos, etc.) to be embedded/uploaded. Such platforms
would have some chance of being an alternatives to centralized walled gardens
like Facebook and Google+.

Edit: As pointed out by daveid (thanks!), Mastodon does allow uploading photos
and videos. So my statement referring to it as text-only was incorrect, and
I've removed that part.

Update: I created an account on an instance and it looked like Tweetdeck's web
interface, which is something I do like during the rare times I login to
Twitter. I personally would still like to see something richer and more
familiar to people who use Facebook and Google+ in terms of the interface,
features like groups, etc. I struggle to keep up with Twitter, and I find
groups to be the best place for me on social networks. I also like that
longform articles can be posted on Facebook with Notes. The 500 character
limit in Mastodon seems a lot better than Twitter, but is still a huge
restriction.

~~~
daveid
Mastodon supports photos and videos.

~~~
vfu6
There is also [https://mediagoblin.org/](https://mediagoblin.org/) , which is
more oriented toward videos.

------
tscs37
I'm a mastodon user, so I might be a bit biased, but I find it a lot better
than twitter. Different servers can also carter to different cultures or
groups so you can find your own niche there.

~~~
aqsalose
Counterpoint: True, there are many "niche" instances available, but on the
other hand, finding the one that aligns with your interests may be difficult.

~~~
yogthos
That's why there's a wizard that helps you start that's
[https://instances.social](https://instances.social) that's linked from
[https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/)

------
eponeponepon
I really want to embrace this - but I'm _still_ not able to make up my mind
whether I object more to Twitter the company or to the whole concept that
Mastodon is implementing.

(edit: not that Twitter themselves have done much to offend me - "Twitter the
company" above is more of a stand-in for commercial social networking
companies at large)

2nd edit because I've not had my coffee yet and didn't explain myself
properly: the "whole concept" that I'm talking about is, I guess, what people
used to call 'microblogging' \- a service of which Twitter is the holotype; as
far as I can see, the real utility of it is in its constant presence via a
phone app, but I am not sure if I want to do that. I definitely _don 't_ want
to have that in my life by joining Twitter, but I can't make up my mind
whether my dislike is more about the companies providing the service, or more
about the generic service itself.

Does that make better sense? :)

~~~
bostand
I don't mind the company, but I don't like that a product of a single company
has become the defacto communication channel for tech people.

In many gatherings speakers identify themselves by twitter handles instead of
email. Do you think that is sound?

~~~
eponeponepon

      In many gatherings speakers identify themselves 
      by twitter handles instead of email. Do you think 
      that is sound?
    

No, I very much dislike that. Part of it is that I am (by choice, for sure),
not able to use that information, but part of it is, as you say, an objection
to a single commercial offering having that position.

------
baxuz
Honestly, it's a barren wasteland, worse than Google+. As far as I've seen
it's mainly used as a replacement for imageboards. Most of the server topics
are either a variant of /b/, or a gathering place for SJWs, furries and
lolicons.

~~~
glenstein
You are describing a completely different platform from the one I visit and
post to every day. For one, it's not barren; it's quite active. One of the
distinguishing features of mastodon compared to other decentralized platforms
is that people use it. In fact one of the complaints about the federated feed
is that it updates so fast it's hard to keep up with.

As for the people there, the people I talk to are interested in games,
philosophy, linux, vaporwave, memes, and meta talk about mastodon and
decentralized platforms. There are a lot of trans and and furries and people
interested in politics. The vast majority have been unfailingly nice. The
granular privacy options allow one to mute those who are overbearing.

And the biggest difference between it and /b/ is that conversations tend to be
two-way a lot more. People aren't purposely posting to try and anger you. In
fact, here's a post I see on my feed right now:

>someone should write a paper on mastodon as a model of a therapeutic
community

If what you're saying is you just don't like platforms that have lots of
people you disagree with politically, that's one thing. But the behavior and
subject matter and culture are significantly different from /b/ and in no way
a wasteland.

~~~
yogthos
That mirrors my experience as well. I also find that the 500 char limit makes
for much more interesting conversations than Twitter. I've discussed books,
games, and programming on Mastodon, and I wouldn't have bothered having these
discussions trying to fit my thoughts into 140 chars.

~~~
sprokolopolis
I totally agree that the higher character limit contributes to better and
deeper conversations. This was one thing excited my about Google+ when it
first came out. People could write essays, explain long processes and they
didn't have to worry about a character limit.

~~~
yogthos
I also like how you can make part of the post hidden by default, so you can
have a summary and then people click to expand if they're interested. I see
that used a lot in my timeline. It's kind of best of both worlds where
everybody isn't posting walls of text.

------
carlchenet
The wanna be Mastodon users could use reading my blog post The Importance of
Choosing the Correct Mastodon Instance [https://carlchenet.com/the-importance-
of-choosing-the-correc...](https://carlchenet.com/the-importance-of-choosing-
the-correct-mastodon-instance/)

There are some ideological and technical points to consider before choosing
your instance.

------
sunilkumarc
Previous discussion of Mastodon here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13303346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13303346)

~~~
PyComfy
also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15053064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15053064)

------
Quanttek
How does it compare to GNU.social?

~~~
BeetleB
It is built on top of it.

~~~
tcit
It isn't.

------
nosuchthing
Mastodon impliments a very very confusing username system, due to the design
of domain-name based federation.

    
    
      alice@mastadon.social
      alice@mastadon.network
    

Twitter suffers from impersonator accounts on its own network, imagine the
confusion of an unfamiliar user having to find a real account on mastadon.

~~~
ar0
You hear this a lot, but I don't really get this... Everyone is using email
and I have never heard anyone complain "email implements a very very confusing
username system" because alice@gmail.com and alice@hotmail.com are not the
same people.

Maybe it would help to make it more explicit that Mastodon works more like
email than Twitter in that respect, but to be fair joinmastodon.org and also
the new user onboarding tutorial do try hard to make that very clear.

~~~
vidarh
A big difference is that with e-mail we've long ago stopped expecting
discoverability. You don't expect to be able to search <insert random
celebrity> and find their e-mail address. You do expect to be able to search
for them on Twitter.

~~~
tkmh
I think not being able to search for <random celebrity> is a good marker of
how mastodon is trying to be something other than just a decentralized twitter
clone. I personally find the twitter microblogging model, wherein most tweets
seem to be retweets of high-profile users or comments on their posts, quite
unhealthy for discussion among equals. Twitter is essentially a media site,
whereas (I think) Mastodon hopes to be something else, more of a forum for
actually taking to people. Whether it can work as/if the userbase grows
remains to be seen, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

~~~
glenstein
The other thing to keep in mind is that idiosyncratic norms and conventions
pop up that are products of how people use the platform, and these have a way
of turning problems into non-problems.

Maybe the network will just evolve to value interactions that aren't centered
around brand pushing. Maybe it will let the rest of the social ecosystem take
care of that and meanwhile mastodon will do it's own thing.

Or maybe a mastodon instance will seek to distinguish itself by providing this
kind of verification and become the de-facto instance for verified brands.
(There's already a mastodon that explicitly courts business brands.) Maybe
we'll even discover that we just don't value such a thing that much, when it
occurs on a network structured to make it easily separable from the rest of
social activity.

All of which is not to say we should waive away the problem, only that it need
not be a conversation-stopper when it comes to the question of whether
mastodon has offers "enough" value in its current form.

------
marban
Haven't we been through this with the likes of identi.ca / statusnet?

~~~
Vinnl
If I understood it correctly, Mastodon is actually compatible with them (yay
standard protocols), so it's more like their rebirth rather than one or the
other having to "win" :)

------
woogiewonka
Yeah, but does it run on blockchain?! :)

~~~
ProxCoques
That's Twister [http://twister.net.co](http://twister.net.co)

