And this is what will stop it from boiling into another online swamp.
I dont see Twitter going anywhere, but I do see it dying as a community.
Twitter is a publishing platform with about as much community as a subway platform at rush hour.
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Mastodon offers the same micropublishing format, but its structure is fundamentally different.
Think of these “servers” as cool neighborhood bars or community centers.
The trick is, all those instances are interoperable.
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it’s possible for you to follow anyone you like, whatever server they hang out on.
And your server, or bar, can also block and ban other servers.
If you get sick of the server you are on, it’s possible for you to switch.
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you’ve got the option to even create your own.
Of course, all this is open to abuse.
It’s easy to set up a server for far-right wingnuts.
But it is also easy to block it.
Algorithm-Free
One huge advantage of Mastodon is that no algorithm can determine what you see.
Instead, you follow people, and you see what they share.
Even likes are private, only seen by the poster.
This makes for a much calmer space, one that doesn’t boost the worst voices.
Mastodon doesn’t care about engagement any more than your paid-for email service provider cares about engagement.
“What’s great about Mastodon is actually the community itself.
Despite all its faults, Twitter is important.
But perhaps Twitter is too important to be trusted with itself.
Open, decentralized internet services have a way of sticking around.
Five years ago, technologist, blogger, and former Kickstarter CTOAndy Baiopredicted that Mastodon would outlast Twitter.
It looks like he was right.
