Exploring Mastodon

Greetings, I hope this post finds you well. This is the post for Day 4 of the #30DayBlogChallenge that Soulcruzer, Darrenkeith, and I have accepted.

For those of you unaware, Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to the Twitter service, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy options, and moderation policies. When Twitter was just turning 11, in 2017, I joined the Mastodon.technology instance just to poke around and engage with like-minded individuals. I explored it very briefly but never stayed around long enough to engage as I had planned to. Twitter was still very much giving me what I needed from a social media site I joined 11 years earlier.

Fast forward to this timeframe, the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, and all the, seemingly, chaotic activity that has ensued since. As such, there is a great deal of worldwide opinion that Twitter is going to go up in flames. As bleak as things seem to be, I’m not subscribing to what I call this “chicken little/doomsday” hype, but will take a wait-and-see attitude. For reasons I won’t delve into here, there are specific things I need to experience to make me leave the platform – until I do experience them, I’ll be around.

When I finally decided to re-join Mastodon a week ago, I found that the mastodon.technology instance, as of December 5, 2022, will be no more. If I recall correctly, it’s due to its age, low usage, and the server maintainer’s lack of time to fix issues with it that have occurred over the years. When I went to joinmastodon.org to look for the mastodon.social server for login, the page didn’t show it. What’s the deal with that? All my Twitter friends joined mastodon.social, but how? I never took the time to find out how and, instead, ended up joining (somehow) mastodon.online. In the end that was fine because mastodon is a decentralized network and that allows me, once setup properly, to follow anyone whose account is on another instance, so all is well.

In the last week, I set up my account, added links, said hello to a few familiar immigrants from Twitter and followed them, the opposite has occurred as well. Twitter will still be my main site until I decide to leave and until then, I won’t be engaging on both places – I don’t have the time BUT at least I’m properly set up.

I don’t know what will become of Twitter, but I’ll keep tweeting, while Mastodon keeps tooting.

Thanks for the read, oceans of rhythm…

Fresh