3 years ago
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In the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, millions of users have flocked to alternatives.
Open source and decentralised microblogging platform Mastodon was probably the biggest winner, but not the only one.
Newcomers like Hive Social and Post.News have seen a surge in sign-ups, while the still-around Tumblr saw a resurgence.
Mastodon grew from around 425,000 monthly active users to over 2 million in three weeks.
Hive’s registered users reportedly surged to a million, with two million app downloads.
Post was rushed into an early beta and reportedly has 335,000 users on its waitlist, with about 65,000 accounts activated.
Anecdotally, the more science and technology-oriented Twitterati have been drawn to Mastodon, while those in entertainment and fashion have gravitated more towards Tumblr and Hive.
Post seems to have attracted a group of North American journalists, particularly those disillusioned with the trade-offs that come with Mastodon being decentralised.
Development on Mastodon began six years ago, with its version 0.1.0 released on Github on 16 March 2016.
Although the uncertainty over what is happening at Twitter has been a boon for the open source platform, many new and prospective users are overwhelmed by it.
For example, Mastodon isn’t hosed in one place — you must choose which server to join before creating an account.
Don’t let this cause analysis paralysis, though. You can always move your account to a different server later.
Unlike traditional social media services that desperately fight to keep you inside their walled garden, Mastodon is part of an open ecosystem affectionately referred to as the “fediverse”.
The Fediverse, according to fediverse.partyThe fediverse is a federated network of interconnected services.
These include other social platforms such as Friendica, GNU Social, Hubzilla, YouTube-like video hosting platform PeerTube, and image hosting platform Pixelfed.
Users across these different services — specifically, ones that support the ActivityPub protocol — can follow and mention (@reply) one another without having to create separate accounts for each platform.
Because part of the magic of Mastodon is that you can host your own instance, I spun one up at kiloduck.com.
When I couldn’t find any other servers hosted in South Africa, I spun up another two using domains with a more local flavour. Absolute Hosting has kindly provided the servers for free.
For those seeking a South African server to try out Mastodon, registrations are open:
- spatlo.com — What better metaphor is there for the melting pot and delicious mess that is South Africa than a good kota? Apologies if it isn’t your preferred spelling. I chose the simplest variant. Please also feel free to disagree with me that a kota and spatlo are the same thing.
- keuwel.com — Afrikaans word for an easy-going, good-faith chat. Or a vigorous but respectful debate. If more than 44 people actively use the instance, I’ll keep maintaining it.
If you’re looking for a server to get started on and needed help deciding, feel free to use Kiloduck, Spatlo, or Keuwel.
Mastodon instance homepage with a profile selected — Kiloduck.comShould someone want to host and moderate servers for any other South African languages, let me know.
Alternatively, here are three much larger instances hosted overseas that you can join:
- Universodon — Profession Brian Cox and Star Trek’s George Takai have selected this instance.
- Masto.ai — “A general Mastodon server for all languages.”
- Mastodon.social — The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit.
If none of these interest you, a searchable list of Mastodon servers is available on Fediverse Observer.
There are instances for all kinds of interests ranging from art and design to programming, information security, and writers and journalists.
Mastodon’s quirks and quandaries
Once your Mastodon account is set up, following other people works a little differently than other social media sites.
Since an account can exist anywhere in the fediverse, you need to know someone’s @handle and server to follow them.
For example, mine is @[email protected].
This shouldn’t be too scary for anyone familiar with email. Mastodon and the greater fediverse is like Twitter and email had a baby — social network meets open protocol.
To follow someone, you enter their address in the search field, then click the follow button to the right of their name:
On their side, they will receive a notification, giving them an opportunity to follow you back:
Once you have followed a few accounts, your timeline will begin to populate with their posts. Much like Twitter.
However, when it comes to direct messaging, Mastadon’s interface could use a little work.
Rather than taking you to a separate page to send a private message, it’s handled in the same box as public posts.
The only indication you get that the message is private is a lock icon that appears on the “Publish” button.
It is worth noting that direct messages are not encrypted. Administrators can see private messages to and from their servers, if they wanted to.
This is not a feature provided by the Mastodon interface, but for someone who figured out how to host their own instance, querying the PostgreSQL database isn’t hard.
Mastodon replies (left) vs direct messages (right)Another complaint that has cropped up is that new users sometimes get confused while browsing people’s timelines and then clicking the “boost” (i.e. retweet) button.
For example, let’s assume you were browsing comedic actor and author Stephen Fry’s timeline at mastodonapp.uk, and your own account is registered at spatlo.com.
If you click the boost, reply, or favourite button outside of your home instance, you will be presented with a popup asking you from which account you would like to take the action.
Once you understand how Mastadon federation works, this extra step makes sense, but for new users it can be bewildering.
Several new users have asked or complained on Mastodon’s Reddit forum about creating an account on every server where they interact with people. This is not necessary.
Mastodon popup when interacting with a post on an instance on which you don’t have an accountHosting a Mastodon instance
Running your own Mastodon instance is easy enough for anyone familiar with web technology.
It will require that you have an SMTP with which to email password resets and other notifications. Mail delivery services like Mailgun, Sendgrid, and Elastic Email are generally recommended for this.
One interesting observation from hosting my own Mastodon server is that even a single-user instance requires a fair bit of RAM.
I started off with a basic virtual server that has 1GB RAM and 2 virtual CPU cores.
Even with only my account active, Mastodon and Linux consumed all of the available memory and ate into the swap space.
Currently, kiloduck.com is running on a virtual server with 3GB RAM, while spatlo.com and keuwel.com each have 2GB.
In both cases, Mastodon’s processes consume as much of the available memory as it can. However, no swap space is being used on either.
Several admins who have posted Mastodon installation guides online have recommended getting a server with 4GB RAM.
bpytop output of Mastodon instance on kiloduck.com, running on 1GB VPS
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