I'm wondering if we should form a Mastodon server for SMB folks who I mostly met on twitter. You can comment below, email me - john@ceobootcamp.com or DM me on Twitter - @BetterCEO.
I think the SMB Twitter "community" if that's the right word has done well by staying out of the junk on Twitter - both before and after the ownership change. BUT I worry that forces beyond our control will drive it out of business.
Mastodon is a potential alternative and below is the best understanding of it that I've seen. It's from a piece by Teri Kanefield discussing the pros and cons of social media. The whole thing is at https://terikanefield.com/curing-the-ills-of-social-media/ but the first part is a lot about the current political situation (which I'm happy to say SMB Twitter has pretty much stayed out of). The Mastodon bit is about half way down. She also talks about POST. I'm copying this with her permission.
-=-=-=- Start of Teri's piece -=-=-=-=-=
III: About Mastodon
Mastodon launched in 2016 when German software developer Eugen Rochko (working for a nonprofit) didn’t like Twitter so he wrote the Mastodon code, and made it public. Yup, he gave it away. Anyone can use it. Anyone can improve it.
This means that anyone can operate their own Mastodon server. People can also join a server that is open to new users. If the server is on this list, you can join. These servers depend on community donations. Each server makes its own rules. If you open an account on one server, and you don’t like it, you can move to a different server and take all your followers with you.
There are no algorithms on Mastodon, which decreases the incentive to produce inflammatory, rage-inducing content.
To show you an example of how this can work, a group of journalists led by Adam Davidson of the The New Yorker established a server for journalists. They vet their members, so you know that anyone with “journa.host” after their names has been vetted by Davidson and his partners.
To follow Davidson and any of the other journalists on journa.host, you can create an account on any of the servers open to anyone. You then interact with them the same way you do on Twitter. You can follow them, comment on their posts, “like” their posts (it’s called “favorite” on Mastodon) or retweet (called “reboost” on Mastodon.)
Here are the advantages for Davidson and his journalist colleagues:
- He and his friends own their own data. Nobody can sell their personal information.
- They make their own rules. They can block anyone they want from their server. They can forbid the use of certain words. Their server, their rules.
- If their server runs well, anyone who follows them or comments on their posts will have a smooth experience.
- They don’t have to live in fear that a corporate overlord will suddenly wreak havoc on their professional lives.
- There is no “quote tweet” on Mastodon (I don’t know about Post.news).
For an interesting take on how the quote-tweet encourages dunking and drives polarization and extremism, see this article by Matt Tait.
Disadvantages:
- They have to monitor the content on their server. The more users they have, the harder this gets.
- They also have to pay the bill. For a sense of the cost of having your own server, click here. If you can do the technical work yourself, the cost is about the same as maintaining a word press website. It isn’t prohibitively expensive. It’s work intensive. (Like a functioning public sphere.)
To take another example, a startup company with 10 engineers and 3 marketing people can set up its own Mastodon server. This gives each member a social media platform. They don’t have to worry about anyone selling their data, blitzing their customers or followers with ads, or allowing Nazis and other creeps onto their comments.
Your neighborhood gardening club can have a server if you all want to chip in. If you (or someone in your group) can do the technical back-end work, the cost is minimal. You can get one for your extended family. Your political activist group can have one. (You are a member of a political activist group, right?)
Here’s an interesting take on why your organization should have its own server.
But what about the bad guys? What keeps them from forming their own server?
Nothing. But your server simply has to block their server and there is an impenetrable wall.
In fact, this is just what happened. A bunch of Nazis and white supremacists opened their own server called Gab. Every single server on this list has Gab blocked, and any new server is advised to immediately block Gab. So the Gab Nazis are completely isolated. You will never see anything they post and they will never see anything you post. The only way a Nazi can see your stuff is if they join a normal server and hide the fact that they are Nazis, but once their Nazi-ness shows, zap. The owner of your server, who doesn’t tolerate Nazis (that’s why you are there) blocks them and they’re gone.
In fact, did you know that Trump’s Truth Social uses Mastodon code? Trump, being Trump, tried to pretend that he created it, but the creators of Mastodon let everyone know that Trump basically used their free-to-the-public code. In other words, Trump is not a tech genius. He was doing the tech world equivalent of plagiarizing.
Mastodon is Messy
Different servers have different rules. It isn’t clear what a server’s rules are when you join. I see people on Twitter say, “Mastodon is confusing. The customer service is terrible. They need to get their acts together.” Here’s the thing: There is no “they.” There is no person in charge. Nobody is promising that the trains will run on time. It’s like democracy that way. It’s messy. We’re on our own, for better or for worse.
Mastodon is not a good place to Monetize
I suspected that Mastodon was not a good place to monetize, so I checked with Professor Google. When I used the search terms “Branding,” “monetizing,” and “Mastodon,” a few articles came up explaining that Mastodon isn’t good for branding, but when I tried to click on them, I hit a paywall, which told me what I needed to know.
The public sphere is not supposed to be a place to make money. It’s a place to exchange ideas.
Things I like About Both Post.news and Mastodon
- Twitter allows 270 characters per post. Mastodon’s default allows 500. Individual servers can change that. Post.news has no limits. Longer posts encourage thoughtful content and discourage EVERYONE NEEDS TO SET THEIR HAIR ON FIRE RIGHT NOW one-liners.
- Mastodon has an edit button. (I assume Post.news does, but I don’t know yet.) The Twitter rationale for not offering an edit is, “What if a bunch of people like it and then the original poster goes back and adds something creepy?” The answer is, “So what? We’re not a bunch of babies. We value good content, which occasionally requires correction.” If you edit on Mastodon, users can see previous versions, which prevents dishonest editing.
- When you look at someone’s Tweet, you instantly see how much engagement a Tweet has, which stimulates “lots of people liked this, I wonder why,” instead of “this content sounds interesting.” It seems to me this makes it easier to ignore the hair-on-fire oneliner rage inducers. This doesn’t happen on Mastodon. (I don’t know about Post.com.)
-=-=-=- End of Teri's piece -=-=-=-=-=
I found a bit more on how Mastodon works here:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/
