Three months after Elon Musk introduced the world to Mastodon, there are already the first swan songs on the social network from Germany. It’s never been as busy there as it is today – and there are enough signs that it won’t be as quiet as before the Twitter takeover. This is not only because the chaos and the direction of the march deter the big role model. It also helps that so many interesting accounts have already moved. In the meantime I am sure: the time of Mastodon has come.
Martin Holland has been writing for heise online and c’t since 2012. For a long time he was primarily concerned with Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations and their consequences. Since that has long been history, astronomy and space travel have finally established themselves as important focal points in addition to other IT topics, above all the social consequences of the Internet, social media, artificial intelligence and the like.
Farewells premature
When the Guardian reported a few days ago that activity on Mastodon was declining again and suggested the 15 minutes in the spotlight was nearing its end, it was reminiscent Article from 2010: At that time, the same newspaper asked whether the young and quite unusual network Twitter had reached its apex. As little as that was true for Twitter at the time, the assessment has so far been true for Mastodon.
It is true that growth has decreased significantly, but the pure number of accounts does not say that much, especially when particularly active accounts are changing. In addition, journalists, for example, should not surrender to the whims of the eccentric new Twitter owner, if only for self-protection.
There are numerous signs that Mastodon has been seen with different eyes in the important US market since the turn of the year. Since the blocking of several press people on Twitter, not only are many more of their colleagues active on Mastodon, institutions and companies are also increasing their commitment: the expectations are particularly high for the announced instance of Mozilla. The publishing platform Medium.com and the browser manufacturer Vivaldi are already active. In addition, the service provider Buffer, which is particularly important for social media departments, has now also integrated Mastodon.
After the blocking of third-party apps on Twitter, it is also foreseeable that even more experienced developers will devote themselves to apps and applications for the alternative. The existing apps already provide significantly different user experiences and show the potential of Mastodon. While Twitter’s app alternatives are now violating the guidelines there, they are explicitly desired at Mastodon. If you want, you can even display the network as a Twitter clone in the browser. There are applications for Windows, Linux, Android and iOS. Some apps allow posts to be timed, use multiple accounts, or edit content. The variety is immense and growing.
Help shape a platform
Once you have gotten used to it, many people find that they (re)discover the joy of tinkering and want to set up their own instance right away. But you don’t have to go that far and you can still go deeper. While Mastodon is also over 6 years old, many long-established and accepted aspects of the platform are back up for debate following the recent influx. For a long time, Mastodon developer Eugen Rochko refused to allow quoted posts (“Quote Tweets” on Twitter). He could move away from this after debates on the platform. Elsewhere, negotiations are currently underway as to what Mastodon should look like in the future. So the next big social network can be actively shaped and where is that already possible? It remains exciting and worth checking out.
(mho)
