Family gettogethers offer us a space to have difficult conversations with loved ones.
This year, the big question on everyone’s minds is “what is Mastodon?”.
Here’s a quick explanation that’ll make sense to your great-aunt.
This is Twitter. Lots of people use it to talk to one another! It’s one big website, and the people who run it spend a lot of money to keep it going. Twitter uses advertising to pay the bills.
Lately a few things have gone wrong with Twitter — mass firings, ritual human sacrifice, etc.
Some people have moved to a different social network that’s pretty different than the ones you’re used to.
This is Mastodon. Instead of one big website, it’s made up of lots of smaller websites, connected through a bunch of magic internet pipes.
Those magic internet pipes allow each Mastodon website to know what people are saying on all the other Mastodon websites.
Nobody owns Mastodon. Each website is run independently of the others, but they all mostly get along.
Most Mastodon websites rely on donations to pay the bills. That way, no single person or entity owns Mastodon.
There are a few Mastodon websites that have cut themselves off from the Mastodon network.
We do not speak of them.
The biggest challenge when starting out with Mastodon is finding a website to join.
If you want to sign up to Twitter, you just type in its website address
For Mastodon, though, there isn’t a single website. There are many different websites, and you have to choose a specific one to join.
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for K-pop fans |
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for people from Bologna, Italy |
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for LGBT people in tech |
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a catch-all Mastodon website |
These are just a few — there are thousands of Mastodon websites to choose from.
Once you’ve chosen a website to join, you can follow people from different Mastodon websites.
Mastodon gives you access to millions of peoples’ thoughts, just like Twitter.
That's it!
Technically Mastodon websites are now called “Mastodon servers”, but your great-aunt won’t care.
Find a Mastodon server to join
© Matt Brown 2022 — no rights reserved