Mastodon: A Federated Answer to Social Media Centralization

Mastodon: Exploration of decentralized social media

Mastodon, as a decentralized social media platform, provides solutions to users' data privacy issues. It was launched in 2016 and the data is distributed across numerous standalone servers (instances), each with its own terms of service and audit policies.

The platform works like email, allowing users to interact across different instances. Each instance can block server content that is contrary to its policies without losing access to the Mastodon network. Users can create different identities in different instances to enhance the social connectivity of the platform.

Despite the many advantages of Mastodon, its learning curve is steeper than mainstream social media platforms due to the lack of official applications, user registration processes, and complex server structures. However, millions of new users still join each year, looking for a more transparent and user-controllable alternative platform.

The revelation of the 2020 Twitter large fraud case

On July 15, 2020, one of the largest fraud cases in Twitter's history occurred. Through clever social engineering methods, a group of people successfully gained access to Twitter management tools and could directly post tweets from multiple well-known accounts.

More than 130 influential Twitter accounts have been hacked. Within minutes, Apple, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and others published a tweet asking users to send Bitcoin to a cryptocurrency wallet and promised that the funds sent will be doubled as a charity. Behavior.

More than 300 transactions occurred within minutes, worth over $180,000 before Twitter deleted these scams.

The weakness of this centralized structure is that it is necessary to deceive a person with administrative rights to gain access to these well-known accounts. In similar circumstances, those with malicious intentions may try to trigger stock market crashes, create political tensions, and even cause global turmoil.

Pros and cons of centralized model

Centralization is a double-edged sword. Its core idea is that social media platforms store, own and protect your data. While this sounds bad, there are some benefits. The primary advantage of a centralized platform is its ease of use. For example, when you forget your password or your account is hacked, platforms with a centralized structure can easily recover your account because they store all your data on their own servers.

But this protection comes at a cost. Your data (such as tweets, retweets, likes, and shares) is stored and owned by the company. These companies have annual financial KPIs and your data is a great way for them to make money, mainly used for targeted advertising. Another drawback of such platforms is that they are not open source, which means a lack of transparency between users and the platform they are using. As a user, you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, or how your data is being processed.

So, if there is a decentralized platform, you can have content you publish and see how your data is used? People have long tried to create platforms like this—App.net, Peach, Diaspora and Ello are some of the more well-known examples.

But the latest decentralized social media pioneer has all the advantages mentioned above.

The Advantages of Mastodon

Mastodon was released in 2016. In the eyes of many, the network is the first step in social media decentralization. While similar to Twitter in appearance and functionality, Mastodon focuses on the security and privacy of its user base through decentralization and federation. All its data is distributed on a large number of independent servers (instances). Each instance has its own terms of service, code of conduct, and audit policies, while collaborating seamlessly with other servers as a federation network.

Eugen Rochko, founder of Mastodon, explained that the platform works very similarly to email. Even if one person uses Gmail and another uses Outlook, email users can easily connect. The same goes for Mastodon and its examples. While users are free to interact with a large number of instances, each instance can also block the content of other servers of their opposition policies or content without losing access to the entire Mastodon network.

Get up Mastodon

Getting started with Mastodon is not as easy as joining Facebook or Twitter. Since the platform is a federated service, very similar to email, Mastodon allows you to sign up for many websites running Mastodon clients, similar to how you create an email account on services like Gmail, Hotmail, or Protonmail.

There is no central place to create a Mastodon account. Instead, you select the community you want to join and create an account there.

mstdn.social is for those who want to discover and explore Mastodon, and it is a great place to start. If you register on this instance, the account you create will be discovered by a combination of your username and instance name. For example, you can send me a message via @alextraykov@mstdn.social . You can think of your profile name as a combination of your Twitter handle and email address.

You do not need to create a new account for each different Mastodon instance. However, if you prefer, you can have independent identities that match the individual instances you are interested in. As mentioned earlier, since Mastodon is federated, you can interact with other users from different servers without registering on the same server. This is the most powerful feature of the platform.

What about mobile terminals? Is there an app that can scroll through toots and boosts on your way home?

Android and iOS do not have official apps. But since Mastodon is open source, there are many third-party applications that allow you to view your account. For Android, a popular option is Tusky; for iOS, there is Toot! or Mast. This is a complete list of mobile, desktop and web applications.

The final thoughts of Mastodon and decentralized social media

While Mastodon is growing steadily, it is far from the scale of Twitter or any major centralized social network. Due to the lack of official applications, user registration processes, and more complex server structures, Mastodon’s learning curve is steeper than the mature social media we use everyday. But that hasn't stopped millions of new users from joining each year, who are looking for more honest alternatives to their existing platforms.

The future of decentralized social platforms is still unclear. Mastodon is the first step towards different things on the web, just like Fediverse’s internet model. I encourage you to put on the hat of an explorer and set sail for a new horizon of the Internet.

(The FAQs part should be included here, and the content is consistent with the original text)

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