Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, or federated universe, a group of interconnected platforms that share communication protocols.
Unlike Twitter, Mastodon presents posts in chronological order, rather than based on an algorithm. It also has no ads; Mastodon is largely crowdfunded. Most of the servers are sponsored by the people who use them. The servers that Mastodon oversees – Mastodon Social and Mastodon Online – are funded through Patreon, a subscription and membership service platform commonly used by content creators.
Although Mastodon looks like Twitter, its user experience resembles Discorda chat and messaging app where everyone also joins servers with their own culture and rules.
Unlike Twitter and Discord, Mastodon doesn’t have the ability to get users or server creators to do anything. That includes setting up content moderation or rules about which posts to update and which to take down.
But the servers can decide how they interact with each other – or whether they interact at all in a shared post stream. For example, when Gab used Mastodon’s code, Mastodon Social and other independent servers blocked Gab’s servers, so posts from Gab didn’t appear on the feeds of people using those servers. there.
How do you join Mastodon?
To join Mastodon, you sign up for an account on a server. This website will be where your account, profile and feed will be stored. Some sites allow instant registration, while others require approval or an invitation. There are at least 4,000 independent servers, according to estimate by fediverse.party. Many topical servers, from one for “all the racers in the universe” to one for England.
Like an email account, your username includes the name of the server itself. For example, a possible username on Mastodon Social would be [email protected]. Regardless of which server you register with, you can interact with other Mastodon server users or you can switch to another server. After signing up for an account, you can post “toots,” which are Mastodon’s version of tweets. You can also increase someone else’s trust score, which is equivalent to a retweet.
