A lot of people make up all kinds of wild assumptions Mastodon, how it works, and what it is. We're here to help clear up some of the biggest ones.

Hey there! Figured I’d share here since my main instance, Lemmy.ml, seems to be really broken right now. I published an article today focusing on some of the myths and misconceptions Mastodon users have spread over the last few years, with some critical analysis and debunking.

Let me know if you like it!

  • biddy@feddit.nlEnglish
    171·
    10 months ago

    Email is the only federated social platform that every normal person is familiar with. It doesn’t matter that the technical specifications are completely different. The metaphor goes as far as “in the fediverse anyone signed up with any instance can communicate with anyone on any other instance, like email”. For that purpose, it’s a good metaphor.

    • Kaldo@kbin.social
      42·
      10 months ago

      Except it’s basically impossible to host your own mail server and have it work reliably, especially for a casual user. Mail space is dominated by Gmail, Hotmail, Protonmail and other giants.

      Even if it might be a good comparison underneath for the technical side, it is not a favorable comparison for an user looking to get into the fediverse.

      • biddy@feddit.nlEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        The same thing is true here. A novice shouldn’t be hosting their own instance, heck a experienced user shouldn’t host their own instance unless they want a hobby.

        • Kaldo@kbin.social
          2·
          10 months ago

          I hope these kinks get ironed out as the software matures. I see no reason why people wouldn’t be able to just rent a cloud server, run a few docker commands and have their own instance running one day. Maybe not for kbin or lemmy, but at least mastodon.

          As long as we all continue to federate with each other instead of relying on some corporation to say whose messages go through and whose don’t, there’s a chance.

        • Kaldo@kbin.social
          2·
          10 months ago

          Not necessarily, email had to work well because businesses depended on it and (lots of) money was involved. Fediverse is a much more hobbyist endeavor and attracts groups of people who are not profit driven.

          That could change of course but that’s why it’s important to stick to these (FOSS) principles from the start. It’s why it was important to reject threads in the fediverse and not let it overtake everything, which it luckily doesn’t seem like it’s gonna any time soon.