Walled Garden Breakout, Pt. 1: Mastodon & the Fediverse
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Post by Rusty
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. For many folks, these names are
synonymous with the internet. For many teenagers and adults, not actively
using these big tech platforms would create the eerie sensation that you
don't exist. And that's a real problem. We invest so much of our
identities in platforms that see us as data points to be studied &
marketed. The crux here is the user's lack of control. Popular social
media platforms function as "walled gardens," or restricted zones in which
the company controls how the platform functions & all the data is archived
on centralized servers.
I won't rehash the sins of Facebook or Twitter here. That project has
already been done by folks smarter than me. Good resources for how walled
gardens perennially abuse their users include the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, BoingBoing, & Motherboard as well as many of the links listed
in our blog's "Resources" page.
Instead, I explore some newer alternatives to walled gardens. These
alternatives center their missions around the issues of data, both who
controls it & where it is stored. They also adhere to principles of
open-source development, consentful interaction, & data protection. While
many alternatives exist, I focus on the two software platforms I use the
most: Mastodon & Secure Scuttlebutt [SSB]. This post will cover Mastodon &
I'll cover SSB in a second one.
Mastodon is by far my favorite name for a social media platform. The
whimsicality extends beyond the platform name too. Rather than "tweeting,"
users send out "toots," which appeals to the part of me that still loves
fart jokes. Mastodon also harbors a syndicate of active communities in
which smart & irreverent opinions are freely shared & toxic trolls are,
for the most part, legislated out of the communities or, failing that,
chased away by users protective of their "instance's" social dynamics.
Mastodon's especially appealing for folks needing to detox from Twitter's
outrage-of-the-day culture or folks who've been bullied or abused on other
social media platforms. Since it was birthed in Germany where Nazism is
illegal, Mastodon clearly states that white nationalism is not tolerated
(this, of course, is not always successful). Many communities on the
platform also explicitly state their wish to provide safe harbor for
LBGTQ+ & disabled folks as well.
Supportive social culture aside, Mastodon can also be confusing for folks
used to the ways of big tech social media. It's the most active part of
the Fediverse, a loose syndicate of servers that support various platforms
& communicate through a number of open standard protocols. In order to
understand how the Fediverse operates, let's break down some of those key
terms.
First, let's talk about servers since they are foundation for the entire
ecosystem. When you use Facebook, you access the company's software
platform & store all the data you enter on the company's servers. The
Fediverse's architects had another idea: what if someone could use a
platform, but choose which server they wished to store their data? Users
could select from a number of servers independent from the platform's
designers or even host their own server. This is the Fediverse's idea
behind decentralization: data & control are fractured among independent
participants. In the Fediverse's lingo, these servers are often dubbed
"instances" or "pods."
However, these independent servers nonetheless remain syndicated by
sharing the use of a particular software platform. Some of the more
popular platforms include Mastodon, *diaspora, Friendica, Pleroma,
Nextcloud, & PeerTube. This creates the intriguing sensation of
simultaneity: users can both pay attention to all the activity on their
own instance, but they can also peer into what's happening on other
instances that use platform as well.
The communication protocol is intriguing because it actually allows
multiple platforms to communicate with each other as long as they share an
agreement for data transmission. For example, when I log into my Friendica
server, I can actually see posts from folks who use the Mastodon or
*diaspora platforms too. This is because Friendica uses the Diaspora
protocol, which *diaspora employs, & the OStatus protocol, which Mastodon
uses too.
This is long way of saying that Fediverse platforms such as Mastodon
facilitate sharing & even thrive on it. They disdain the walled garden's
isolating nature & instead wish to have a number of semi-autonomous
gardens communicating with each other.
The first big challenge for someone using Mastodon is finding an instance
to join. When I first joined Mastodon, I didn't understand just how
important an instance would be. I understood the concept of an instance
being the place where your data would be stored. However, I looked at
instances as merely portals to the Mastodon community as a whole. And
portals they are, but they function in an unusual manner.
So I haphazardly navigated
https://joinmastodon.org, seeking to join an
instance that didn't require an invitation, primed to select the first one
that vaguely appealed to my interests. I found one. I saw the server was
in France, but I figured that wouldn't be too big of an issue. Well, you
can guess my first issue: the majority of the posts on that instance are
in French, a language that I'm not very versed in.
I then discovered the structure of Mastodon's user interface. You navigate
between 3 different feeds: "home," which includes everything posted by you
& folks you follow; "local timeline," which includes everything posted by
folks on your instance; "federated timeline," which includes everything
posted by everyone followed by folks in your instance. After joining that
first instance, this is what I found: an empty home feed, a local timeline
mostly in French, & a federated timeline that confusingly mixed porn,
anarchist politics, newsbots, & bizarre shitposting. Yup, I had a
headache.
I spent some time building my home feed. I found folks & organizations I
used to follow on Twitter: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ernie Smith of
the Tedium Blog, Cory Doctorow, etc. So my home feed began to feel less
lonely. However, I became disappointed that many of the first folks I
followed were either merely crossposting from Twitter or generating
updates through bots. Doctorow, in particular, employs an exhausting army
of bots on Mastodon that I've had to control with extensive filtering.
Folks like Doctorow peeve me: they write & talk about the dangers of Big
Tech, but refuse to leave Twitter; they only dip their toes in Mastodon's
waters, but don't commit. Rip that band-aid off, motherfuckers!
Mastodon began to feel alienating to me, to say the least. However, I
didn't want to give up on the platform completely; I realized that the
instance I chose wasn't a good fit for me. So I went hunting again, but in
a smarter fashion. I then found
https://scholar.social, an active home for
academics to share ideas. As a community college writing instructor, this
looked like where I needed to belong. So I jumped ship. I quickly became
invested in the posts on my local timeline & the federated timeline led me
to discover interesting folks on other instances that I soon would follow.
My home feed became a rich collection of ideas from academics, tech folks,
& political activists.
The instance holds so much power because it influences how you find other
folks. This, of course, is the most obvious with the local timeline, but
it's also true on the federated timeline. At first, I thought that the
federated timeline was showing me everything everyone posted on all
Mastodon instances. After more carefully reading about the platform's
structure, I realized that the federated timeline only shows the folks
followed by other folks on your instance. If no one in your instance
follows any solar punks on an off-grid farm in England, your federated
timeline won't show any solar punks' posts. That is, unless you somehow
find those punks & start following them yourself. The instance is indeed a
portal to all the other instances, but it remains a skewed one.
Once I became integrated with my instance's community & started following
other folks, I saw what makes Mastodon so distinctive from platforms such
as Twitter. Most instances harbor communities that are manageable in size.
For example, while scholar.social has 3,550 registered users, only 490 are
active. This means that your feeds don't avalanche you with information. I
remember my Twitter feed would update quicker than I could read. My brain
would just vomit out the information it absorbed, leaving me as blank as a
zombie.
A reduction in the info-avalanche equals an increase in how users engage
with your posts. While Mastodon replicates Twitter's structure with
"favourites" & "boosts," folks are much more apt to offer you written
replies. They're also remarkably generous with sharing their knowledge &
expertise when I ask questions or solicit recommendations. I feel that my
voice is small, but it somehow gets heard.
The self-selecting nature of instances means that it's quite easy to fall
into echo chambers. While Mastodon promotes diversity of opinions, there
are some opinions that are clearly not welcome. Now I'm not referring to
hate speech or trollish alt-right tactics. No, I'm referring to less
terroristy worldviews. For example, I'm not sure a Google advocate would
last very long on most instances. One of my most popular posts proclaimed
that copyright is the devil, but considering the large proportion of
open-source champions on the platform, I know I was only preaching to the
choir. Now collective affirmation is important, but I do wonder if
Mastodon only appeals to folks with certain kind of worldviews.
Since Mastodon allows for extensive filtering of posts, one can build a
protective ideological shell, only seeing what they wish. Yes, this can
reduce what a person is exposed to, but one can also interpret this
activity through the concept of consent. There's a lot of odious shit out
there & Mastodon is no exception. You should be able to control what
you're exposed to. That federated timeline can be wacky, y'all! A lot of
things you don't wish to see may appear: porn, mundane shitposting,
commentary on current events. You have to shape that federated timeline by
filtering phrases & blocking certain individuals & domains.
Mastodon is definitely a rewarding social media experience & I highly
recommend it. It does require some patience, but if you are willing to
work with it, it'll yield results. Also, it'll prepare you for the social
media alternative I'll profile in my next post: Secure Scuttlebutt [SSB].
By the way, check out our blog's Mastodon account:
[email protected]
