Over the last months I’ve been spending a lot less time on Twitter, now called X, and more time on Mastodon, its open source doppelganger.
The difference between the two can be summed up in two words. No algorithm.
When you use Twitter, or any commercial social media site, an algorithm encourages you to stay online. You like fluffy bunnies? Here are posts on fluffy bunnies. You can quickly fall into a fluffy bunny rabbit hole, where fluffy bunnies are all that matters, and anyone who doesn’t like fluffy bunnies is some sick pervert. This is especially true on TikTok.
At Twitter, this is found under the tab marked “for you.” The tab doesn’t exist in Mastodon. Instead, there are other tabs. “Home” is like Twitter’s “following” tab. Federated shows the most recent posts on any site, no matter where they come from. You can input a hashtag to get news on any topic of interest, like #Ukraine. There’s also a local tab featuring messages placed on Mastodon server you are part of.
This last is important. There is no central control in the “Fediverse,” which includes many other social services, including a Facebook clone and an Instagram clone. Instead, anyone can spin-up a server or “instance” and choose who to connect or “federate” with. In practice, while Meta’s “Threads” is compatible with Mastodon, many Mastodon servers won’t link to it, fearing the force of the algorithm, the coming firehose of content, or just Mark Zuckerberg’s right hook.
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