Some Non-Technical Thoughts on Mastodon And Its Future
I signed up to Mastodon about ten days ago and since have been trying to get a feel for it: a feel for what it could become. I say “become” because I think Mastodon is still in its early days of adoption.
This is not about features, this is about how a social network changes, and likely will have to change further with growth.
What is Mastodon, very briefly?
Mastodon is not “new”, it has been around for years. I have been somewhat aware of its existence (and its “predecessors” like friendica and GNU Social) but only recently my interest was piqued again.
Mastodon describes itself as an “open-source and self-hostable microblogging platform similar to Twitter or Tumblr.” [1] In reality, it — or better what is called the Fediverse — is a network of services people can sign up to, a network of connected instances running Mastodon. For simplicity however I will refer to the network as a whole as “Mastodon”, simply because that is what everyone else does.
One cultural shift is that new users perceive Mastodon not as a decentralised software but as one social network, and treat it as such.
The decentralised social network is changing
Mastodon has seen enormous growth over the last weeks, growing from tens of thousands to over two million active users recently [2], and
with Elon Musk’s recent antics in running Twitter it is expected to grow further. It has at this point, if it wants it or not, become the Twitter alternative.
With such numbers now marginalising the “pre Twitter meltdown generation” to effectively below 10%, cultural changes seem inevitable.
The vast majority of recently joined users would never consider to run their own instance, nor would they know anyone personally who does or are even interested in how it technically works. The first big cultural shift Mastodon has experienced is that new users perceive Mastodon not as a decentralized software, but as one social network, and treat it as such.
Along with this come obvious shifts in how Mastodon is used. Long time Mastodon users have told me about a “special culture” (which they describe as distinctively different from Twitter or Facebook), a “kinder and more respectful” way to communicate and how they wish to preserve it.
Content moderation
The overall agreed guidelines ( which can differ between instances but have common ground) in fact do not differ much from those published by other social networks, including Twitter’s. [3]
Differently from Twitter (as with technical support) moderation is — and hence the “modelling” of a certain culture — decentralised and falls under the responsibility of instances. That makes it easier for admins to “enforce” certain rules on a smaller user base, which — of course — leads to at least slightly different rules applying to groups of users in the network.
Content moderation can be time consuming, frustrating and earns little reward
Content moderation is no fun. From my own experience it is extremely complex. Developing a consistent rule-based content moderation even on a single instance beyond a certain size is not as easy as one might think. It can be time consuming, frustrating and earns little reward (those affected by moderation will never be grateful, others will complain about too little action being taken).
It also includes dealing with people with mental health issues, victims of abuse. It requires a special set of skills very different from the technical skills of running a Mastodon instance.
A particular aspect of Mastodon is to give users (besides the option to mute or block other users) the option of blocking whole instances from their timeline. The same possibility is open to admins (i.e. blocking communication between their own and another admin’s instance).
The concept of instance-blocking obviously derived from the idea of having many very small instances in the network, but it’s not hard to see how this can become problematic if you are talking about instances with tens of thousands of user accounts.[4] Giving users a tool to “mute” a whole instance is empowering, it could lead to a very scattered experience.
Instances splitting from the overall network has happened in the past but will be much more dramatic with scale. In fact I believe that an overuse of instance blocking might lead to more centralization.
I believe that with growth a certain amount of centralisation will be impossible to avoid.
I suspect that smaller number of users per instance has contributed greatly to the experience of a “kinder” network so far, if this can be maintained remains to be seen.
Centralisation
I believe that with growth a certain amount of centralization will be impossible to avoid. Most users will choose a “general” instance rather than one dedicated to a specific “topic” (such as common interest or locality), and will tend to sign up to larger instances believing that with larger user numbers the service will be more stable, more professionally run and better managed.
The current network topology suggest that 30% of the network is likely being handled by the top 60 instances. That is still very much decentralized overall, but far from the idea of being a network of “self-hosted” nodes.
With scale come other issues. If sysadmins (most of them likely not experienced in the matter) will be able to handle the responsibility for tens of thousands of users, technically as well from the perspective of compliance, will be interesting to see. (A recent and well written article lays out the long list of regulations for admins to consider [5].)
It is what users want it to be
Especially those coming from Twitter see the service as a general purpose platform rather than a community which covers only one aspect of their lives.
They also “expect” a seamless experience, where the federated approach is virtually invisible to them.
In its core Mastodon is a straight forward “microblogging platform”, as Twitter used to be way back. However interpretation of this varies. Is it “blogging” as broadcasting, or more interacting like a community [6]?
Journalists, “Media Celebrities” etc are used to broadcast, so are status bloggers. Users coming from Twitter will be used to “passively” following those broadcasts, too. Again, with no central instance it will be the users who decide how to use it.
Over time I believe that there is no other way for the original community than to “let go”, it has — to be blunt — simply ceased to be “their network”. Some will perceive this as an “invasion” (both from different platforms and different geographic regions) and feel sad about it.
Scammers, trolls and politicians. Don’t worry, they will come.
One aspect of cultural difference which has been pointed out to me was the absence of professional troll brigades and paid chills, political campaigns, crypto scammers and those with “commercial interest”. But such as politicians they will come, as they seek a large audience like we breath air.
When it comes to business users — who also will discover the large audience — it will be harder to draw a line. Interpretations of what constitutes legitimate commercial use or is considered spam will vary widely.
The “no-algorithm” approach
Last, I wonder how the no-algorithm approach on Mastodon will scale. No algorithm means that content presented to you in the timeline currently comes solely from people you follow or is content people you follow have “boosted” (i.e. re-tweeted). If it can stay like this remains to be seen [7].
While this is a clean approach, it makes — from my first experience — following the timeline a challenge at times, especially if you are following many users.
Reddit and Twitter go to great length to present you suggested content, topics and trends are both a curse and a chance. Done with bad intentions they can influence or manipulate, done right without commercial interest and transparency in place it could help to break out of a bubble and explore the network. [8]
Overall..
Overall I had a great first week on Mastodon. It’s good that there is a new kid on the block, especially with all the things going on over at Twitter, and it’s exciting to watch a new network grow like this. I think mass adoption can help it to succeed where others have failed.
There will be huge challenges and things will change further, but let’s see how far this can grow, maybe I write about a 10 Million user network by Christmas.
You can obviously find me on Mastodon at: mistakenotmy@universeodon.com
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[2] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109371848012783834
[3] https://mastodon.social/about -> Server rules
[4] https://cryptodon.lol/@lefteris/109373514391305346
[5] https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html
[6] https://mastodon.social/@blaine/109369153042663445
[7] https://social.lot23.com/@jon/109372263758674463
[8] I will be writing more about suggestion algorithms and the issues around them in another post.
