Mastodon: Yea or nay?

For me, even seeing the Muskhole shithole that Twitter is becoming, it's nay.

Because it was 6 years ago.

I signed up shortly after it was launched and, like many new joiners are learning, found the whole disseminated server idea (not going to use a PR name) clunky at minimum, frustrating at most.

Then, the idea that Mastodon is a Garden of Eden in social media? 

NOT!

I'd previously read CJR's piece about not just individuals, but other whole Mastodon servers blocking the new journalism server. Blocking itself is not the only issue. Read the piece and note conspiracy theorizing about journalists, etc.

Beyond that, Noema Magazine has a good piece about bad behavior on Mastodon. In one of the pieces it links, Wil Wheaton says that harassment he got on Mastadon, essentially full online mobbind, was worse than on Twitter. The other, by a researcher studying online harassment, notes that the decentralization means no centralized safety service (even if outsourced to the Philippines like Facebook does; dunno about Twitter). It also means that you have to block people on multiple servers.

Back to that Noema piece. A main focus is how "traditional" social media was built on the issue of scalability. It says that Mastodon offers the flip side, of what it calls "subsidiarity." That's like US federalism, in which federal laws apply at the local level, but are often enforced by local officials. I can give you the flip side of here in Tex-ass, though. Having TCEQ do EPA enforcement work doesn't lead to much enforcement. Or, per the old phrase, "Who watches the watchers?" And Eugen Rochko appears to still be a fair amount of a one-man band. 

As far as collaborative decisions on servers on safety and moderation issues? The votes, it appears, are majoritarian, not unanimous. Which means, if you don't like enough decisions, you have to join a new server, or see if you can "transport" your current Mastodon account, and friends lists, etc., to a new server. That's not guaranteed. Plus, as the authors note, Mastodon is not currently built for server groups to have governance decisions there, so they "offshore" it.

More here, on a second main thread, about different privacy and security standards at different servers. Because of this, comments won't necessarily migrate from one server to another.

Then, decentralization may have other problems. This Forbes piece says things like data breaches WILL occur.

To sum up then, is Mastodon private? Nope. Well, no more or less than any other social network or community. Will there be data leak, if not breach, stories emerging as Mastodon grows? Yep. Of course, there will, this is the real world, after all. So, what should you do if still at the pondering stage when it comes to Mastodon membership?

If they're serious enough, who do you sue? The operator of your group's server?

Back to scalability. The "other" link above says Rochko may not be interested in scalability. Or related issues. Which means people fleeing the burning ship of Twitter later rather than sooner will be SOL. 

Also, remember that Gab and Truth Social are both based on Mastodon forks. Rochko wrote former President Donald Trump directly after Truth Social didn't make its code public. Nothing else happened after it did so.

Finally, an issue related to the new AI "art" creation programs. People have been called out on Twitter for using photos from these programs, since they scrape commercial photos. Is Mastadon any better on things like this?

So.Choose.Wisely. That was said more than once in the Forbes piece.

Oh, if you really hate legacy social media, or anything like that? I challenge you to delete your Amazon account if you're talking about deleting Twitter and/or Facebook.

Update, Sept. 27, 2024: More here in this decent piece, not just on the racism at Mastodon, but the unsafe-by-design nature of fediverses. (Take it with a grain of salt; it comes from a hardcore identitarian perspective.)