Now I’m on mastodon

Posted 2022-12-04 15:52. Tagged meta, media, fediverse.

I have now started to write and read on mastodon, as @rasmus_kaj@mastodon.se. Mastodon is a federated protocol for micro-bloging. A short explanation of that is that it is a bit like twitter, but instead of everyone connecting to the same site, you can choose among many sites, or even run your own.

The address above can be understood as two pieces. First @rasmus_kaj, which is me. Then @mastodon.se, which is the DNS name of the instance (the service or service provider) i use. That the system is federated implies that people who has chosen different instances still can communicate and follow each other.

It also implies that there is no central owner who runs it all for their own purposes, and that to core of it all is an open protocol, rather than a system for selling targeted advertising. Per Axbom’s post on why he left the old-style social networks is worth reading.

Apart from the criteria Axbom lists for choosing an instance, I wanted to be on one that is hosted in Sweden, and where posting in Swedish is permitted (many instances popular among open source people explicitly forbids non-English posts, which is reasonable if that is the only language moderators can be expected to speak). That made the obvious assortment of instances rather small, and rather than to keep looking for more obscure instances, I applied for an account on https://mastodon.se.

This does not imply the end of my blog. I hope many of my toots (short posts on mastodon) will be links to longer posts on this blog.