You Can't Join Mastodon

Sep 1, 2024 This post is also available in:

• Portuguese (Brazil)

Mastodon Is Not A Place

I think that Mastodon has a messaging and terminology problem, specifically in relation to the experience that a user will have by “joining Mastodon”.

There are at least four different things that people might be referring to when they talk about “Mastodon”, “joining Mastodon”, “having a Mastodon account”, or “here on Mastodon”.

1. The Mastodon software project.
2. The official server operated by the Mastodon project: mastodon.social¹
3. Any of the other Fediverse servers (or the entire collection of servers) running Mastodon software specifically.
4. The entire Fediverse, which includes both Mastodon servers, and servers running other software, like Misskey, Pixelfed, or a growing number of platforms that support ActivityPub, like Wordpress, or Threads.

It’s mostly only the techiest of folk that are referring to #1, discussing the software itself, installation, administration, contributing to the software on github, etc. Nerds even by the standards of those of us already on the Fediverse (nerds and nerd adjacent).

A significant number of non-technical users might be forgiven for thinking that mastodon.social is the entirety of the Fediverse (which they may refer to as “Mastodon”). Users who have been around a bit longer might be aware that there are other “Mastodon” servers out there that they are interacting with.

Going out on a limb, it’s perhaps a minority of users that understand that the Fediverse/“Mastodon” is not one place, but many places connected, only some of which might be running Mastodon software.

I don’t mean to berate anyone for using words wrong, or demonstrate my superior use of terminology…

I think the terminology “join Mastodon” is the source of a fair amount of confusion and strife, which does an injustice not only to the Fediverse as a whole, but the Mastodon project as well.

That ship may already have sailed, the bell cannot be un-rung, etc… but I think it’s worth considering that a real shift in messaging and how we talk about the Fediverse might have a measurable positive impact on the experience people have when they try to use it.

For the rest of this post, I will use Mastodon to mean the software project, not the Fediverse, or a particular server. Unless it’s in quotes, which means “Mastodon (ambiguous) – Who can really say what it means?”

Confusing Expectations

When you join or sign up for a service on the internet, there are expectations that come along with that action. When you join Twitter, or join Facebook, or sign up for TikTok, those companies are providing the service that you’re using, those companies are responsible for the moderation they do or fail to do.

But you don’t join email. Email is one way of interacting on the internet. Browsing the web is another, using FTP is another. You don’t join The Web, or join FTP. In order to use email, or FTP, or various web based accounts, you need to sign up with a specific service provider. You sign up for a Hotmail/Outlook/Gmail account, or maybe an email account comes with your internet service, and Hotmail or your ISP, or whoever, provides you with email service. You can use your Hotmail account to email anyone else who has an email account on any other service.

Moderation Comes From Somewhere

If you sign up for Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, you understand that moderation, spam preventing, etc. will be provided by Twitter, Instagram, Gmail. If you sign up for a private forum for widget makers, or Whatever Game players, moderation and spam prevention are provided by that forum.

If you “join Mastodon”, who is providing your service? Who is responsible for moderation, and spam prevention?

It’s not Mastodon. Weird?

If, on the other hand, you signed up for a Fediverse account, on mastodon.social, or sunny.garden, or pixelfed.social, who is providing your service? Who is responsible for moderation and spam prevention? It’s the server that you signed up on, which provides you with a fediverse account.

An Unfulfillable Promise

From a messaging point of view, if “Mastodon” is a place you wish people to join, then it becomes important to communicate that it is a safe and well moderated place… which, paradoxically, the Mastodon Project has no control over.

To position “Mastodon” as a place that you can join, sets up the impossibility of offering a consistent experience, or robust moderation. Beyond the practical impracticality of such a small underfunded team managing the entire fediverse, it is also logically impossible.

The experience a user has, the moderation standards they are subject to, are literally beyond the control of the Mastodon Project, because it is not operating those servers.

There Be Dragons

The answer to “is Mastodon a safe place for me?” – to the extent that it means “is the Fediverse a safe place for me?” – is “No.” This is because it’s the wrong question.

Is email safe? Is The Web safe? Is The Internet safe? Not really.

Safety in these spaces comes from a combination of the service providers and tools (apps, browsers, ad blockers, spam filters) you use to access them, and your own understanding and ability to employ best practices, at whatever level that is.

Conflicting Interests

The Mastodon project, as the “face” of the Fediverse, is in a difficult position. From a PR point of view, Mastodon is broadly attempting to promote Mastodon The Brand, the Concept Of Decentralization, The Fediverse, and mastodon.social.

But in that position, how do you honestly answer “Is the Fediverse safe?” when the answer is “not really”.

What about “Is Mastodon safe? How about for minorities?”… if “Mastodon” means “The Fediverse”, the real answer is the same, “not really”.

But when “Mastodon” means the Mastodon project, or when talking about mastodon.social specifically, the answers once again become clear and concrete…

This is what we’re doing to help admins and users of our software stay safe on the Fediverse.

This is what we do for our users specifically to help them stay safe on mastodon.social.

Moving Forward

This isn’t a new thought, but one way to tackle is problem is to invite people to join communities. Join sunny.garden! Join mastodon.social! Join pixelfed.social!

When you talk about a specific community, the answers to questions start making sense.

What’s sunny.garden, I’ve never heard of that before? Oh, it’s a fediverse server, you sign up and you can use your account to access the fediverse, talk to people on mastodon.social, etc…

Is it safe? Is it well moderated? What’s the culture like? These questions have much more concrete answers that can be given about a particular server.

How do I get a Fediverse account? Sign up on a fediverse server, I use sunny.garden, it’s great! Oh, but if you want a more tech focused server, maybe check out hachyderm.io? Let me know once you have an account and I’ll follow you, whatever server it’s on.

Beyond Mastodon

I appreciate the Mastodon project, the opportunity it has presented for me to run a Fediverse community, the effort that has been put into developing the software, the testing that goes into each release, and so on. As an admin, I don’t want to live on the bleeding edge of a small project under rapid development, and appreciate the stability Mastodon provides.

But ultimately, I’d like to see Mastodon move into the background. Mastodon is software used to provide a service.

Is postfix safe? Is nginx safe? The question doesn’t really make sense. These server software aren’t what’s providing the safety; whoever is operating your email server, web server, or forum, or whatever, is who is providing that moderation effort. End users generally don’t talk about their postfix account, their nginx or apache account, and so on.

Of course Mastodon is only one of several Fediverse micro-blogging server softwares, like Misskey, Akkoma, PixelFed, and so on. And the point is, I don’t think we should be thinking about having a Misskey account, or an Akkoma account or a PixelFed account.

Get a Fediverse account, from a server and community that suits your needs.

Epilogue

One of the big problems that the Fediverse currently faces, is that there are many people (BIPOC especially) for whom there are no communities that currently meet their needs. And a big part of that is an immaturity of the server software and tools used to provide those services. While Mastodon, as one example, has some level of moderation tools – often much better tools than newer less mature projects – they are still very blunt, unwieldy, often error prone, and actively resistant to configuration.

This will hopefully continue to improve, slowly, over time. But there is also a huge space, waiting to be filled, for software that meets the needs of communities that are not mastodon.social. Small communities, BIPOC communities, government agencies, journalists, high profile personalities, YouTubers, personal instances, … on and on.

I’m eager to see how projects like GoToSocial, and Letterbook progress.