Mastodon - an open-source, decentralized social network Website

There's been a lot of buzz in the past few days regarding Mastodon, and frankly whether it survives or not, I think the technology behind it is very necessary these days and it's wonderful to see that technology being applied to social networking.

TL;DR: Mastodon is like Twitter, but better and safer. However, the community is nowhere near the size of Twitter currently.

Before rushing off and just signing up, I highly recommend reading up about it to fully understand how it works. I also recommend doing the same before simply shrugging it off as not being as straight forward as simply going to a website and signing up (while it still is pretty simple, you'll need to understand the decentralized and instances part mainly).

Main Mastadon Instance: mastodon.social - Mastodon
Mastadon FAQ: mastodon/FAQ.md at master · tootsuite/mastodon · GitHub
The creator's blog article: Welcome to Mastodon – Eugen Rochko – Medium
Wired Article: Could Mastodon be the social network to replace Twitter?
Motherboard Article: Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It?

Issues that I see most likely arising is the fact that it won't be decentralized as the creator is wanting. Most users (myself included) will want to use the main Mastodon instance (mastodon.social) mainly due to the fact that's where all the newest changes will get pushed to first as well as that's where the largest community is going to be. Either way I'm excited to see what becomes of this. It's innovative to say the least.

 

Even though I signed up and messed around with Mastodon in 2017, I’ve been actually using it as a full Twitter replacement since Musk started letting all the terrible people back on.

Of course there are people I miss on my timeline, but enough of my circles of interest have migrated to make it my main social network of choice. I don’t post for the benefit of Twitter anymore. Sad as that makes me feel sometimes. Mastodon is full of cool and interesting people. Most importantly, I don’t immediately feel terrible when reading through my timeline.

Here’s an [invite link](https://mastodon.social/invite/HkP8J6LR) for folks interested in joining the primary instance, mastodon.social.

 

@Jason Tate I see Mastodon has been added to the Contact Details settings panel, but nothing is displayed. Not quite done yet?

 

Correct. It’s there and the info is saved, just not visible yet on the profile cause I wasn’t sure if url or username made most sense yet. Still playing with next integrations and stuff here, etc

anyway I’m here: https://mastodon.social/@jasontate

so far been using it more then I have Twitter in a while, since it feels so much smaller and less likely to experience context collapse

 

I think url, right? Making a rel=“me” link to allow for profile verification on Mastodon.

 

I’m toying with the idea of hosting a music-centric instance catering to alt/emo crowds.

This could live at:
- emo.kids
- social.discography.fm
- other

Orrr… @Jason Tate could host it at a Chorus subdomain and limit invites to subscribers?

 

I do own encore.fm as well. I’m open to discussing some options of what we could put together.

getting the music people and bands to switch over would be amazing

 

That would be really interesting!

 

Hmm, so chr.us, encore.fm, social.chorus.fm / mastodon.chorus.fm are all also possibilities.

supporter / band / musician exclusive would be a good way to go

 

Short and readable is nice, so encore.fm is a solid choice. But promoting the site is probably more worthwhile, so I’d vote for the social subdomain.

 

im still trying to figure out mastodon, but would absolutely join a chorus server over what im currently on. i think im so used to twitter curating things for me based on their algorithm that actually figuring out what i want to see is taking some time to get used to

 

My best advice is to seek out and follow hashtags related to things you like. For me, that means bands I listen to or hashtags I've found related to movies or TV programs I enjoy.

The more you post and follow, the faster you will find content you enjoy.

 

Checking out Mastodon and would definitely join or move to a Chorus server if you started one, Jason.

 

Is there a preferred mobile app for Mastodon? Is the official one good enough, or any third-party ones that are recommended?

 

Official one is totally fine and supports a few features others don’t yet. I’ve tested ~7 apps and use a combination of three:

1. Ivory by Tapbots (alpha TestFlight)
2. Official client
3. Mammoth (TestFlight)

Metatext is very good as well, but has recently fallen out of support due to developer life events.

 

WSJ posted a non paywalled guide on how to use Mastodon How to Use Mastodon, the Social-Media Platform Blocked by Elon Musk’s Twitter

 

Come be my friend!

 

I'm lightninglawyerman@mastodon.social if anyone wants to add me.

 

Join the Ivory by Tapbots beta

Ivory invites up!

 

It’s so good. I’m so happy.

 

Once push notifications are added, there will be very few reasons to jump around apps. I do wish new follows were included in the activity list though.

 

I think on Pauls new poll “notification tab” may be a way to do just that.

 

There we go!

 

man, that looks great. im still using the official app, which to be fair, does the job. but would like something a bit more in depth

 

i think the twitter alternative will be the thing jack launches when that eventually launches