From Twitter to Mastodon?

While the Elon Musk + Twitter situation seems to get stranger by the day, many people are moving over to Mastodon instead. Whether it sticks or not remains to be seen, but it has potential to be a great solution.

At it’s core, Mastodon is a decentralized social network that feels a lot like Twitter. Really, though, it works somewhat like email where there is no single owner of the service. With email, you don’t sign up with “the email service” — you sign up with Gmail or Yahoo or whatever provider that you’d like, and they can all talk to one another.

With Mastodon, there are a ton of companies (and individuals) that have set up Mastodon servers, so you need to sign up with one of them. Once you’re on that server, they control your account but you’re able to chat with anyone on the service.

More work?

Ultimately, this means its a bit more work than just signing up for Twitter. Similar to my thoughts on POSSE, the extra work really can lead to more power and freedom for you.

Personally, I’m using the service at c.im. I’m not sure it’s perfect, but it’s a solid platform and seems like a good place to set up shop. You can find and connect with me here: https://c.im/@mickmel

Similar to email, your username is really username + server (like mickmel@gmail.com for email)…