I poked the owner and he updated mastodon.social to say this and be more clear...
> What is mastodon.social?
> This page describes the mastodon.social instance - wondering what Mastodon is? Check out joinmastodon.org instead! In essence, Mastodon is a decentralized, open source social network. This is just one part of the network, run by the main developers of the project It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome as long as you follow our code of conduct!
I've been using it for about 2 weeks now and I love it. If you pick a cool instance related to your interests and toot to your liking, you often get responses almost instantly from people reading the local and federated timelines, and you get tons of new people to follow as well. It just feels so much more open to meeting new people than Twitter does.
> What is mastodon.social?
> This page describes the mastodon.social instance - wondering what Mastodon is? Check out joinmastodon.org instead! In essence, Mastodon is a decentralized, open source social network. This is just one part of the network, run by the main developers of the project It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome as long as you follow our code of conduct!