As many users seek alternatives to X, rival social network Mastodon says that its official app downloads are up 47% on iOS.
Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko says downloads on Android are also up 17%, while total monthly sign-ups rose approximately 27% to 90,000.
The open-source X rival functions much like its competitor, the site formerly known as Twitter, on the outside. However, unlike the centralized Twitter, Mastodon consists of thousands of different social networks, which are integrated into a web it calls the “fediverse.”
Fantastic! I’m reducing my dependency on for profit entities every day, and federation is a great means to that end. Let’s welcome those moving over during the exodus!
Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.
It costs money to power servers and to maintain them. Most of the fediverse instances like to claim they are run on donations and so forth. But… think about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.
Everyone is always shocked when they find out how social media or a “free” vpn or whatever is funded and where there information is going. But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.
The guy who runs the instance I’m on sends out a statement every month, detailing how much he’s received in donations, what everything has cost, and how much there is leftover. Accounting for a small buffer to allow for emergencies, he donates the excess to Alzheimer’s research. We’re a Pritchett focus instance, so everyone’s happy with that.
I’ve paid far more to my Masto admin than I ever did to Twitter.
hink about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.
a) it’s not significant amounts, it’s quite cheap, per user, to run lemmy, e.g. lemm.ee is one of the bigger instances and costs 200 Euro a month, b) tipping 20% on a bill that doesn’t even include any service is not the same as donating to a service you like. This is more like a patreon which doesn’t lock anything for non-donating users.
it’s quite cheap, per user, to run lemmy, e.g. lemm.ee is one of the bigger instances and costs 200 Euro a month,
storage requirements will only increase (attachments, linked website images), unless you are regularly deleting content and so contributing to link rot
Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.
Generally speaking if you aren’t the customer then you are the product. Individual Lemmy and Mastadon instances are getting around this for now because they are small enough that their operational costs can be covered by the ideologically motivated instance admins and users. If Lemmy or Mastadon ever gains wide popularity this will change.
Proud to be part of that 47%
iOS friends, check out the Mastodon client Ice Cubes.
It’s free (beer and speech) and it’s very good IMO.
Also, after you settle on a server, consider setting up a recurring donation to your admin to help with server costs. The way I see it, it’s that or ads and enshitification.
The weird thing is that it doesn’t matter what instance/server your friends are on. If they follow you, they’ll get all your posts in their feed. The best advice I can give anyone starting out on Mastodon is to follow tags instead of people in order to surface interesting posts, then you can follow people as they come up on feeds.
I mean, it’s just like e-mail addresses, I really don’t understand the difficulty. Yes technically if I want to e-mail joe smith, I need to know his address, including what mail provider he uses. Which is why when I ask for his e-mail address he tells me “Joesmith@gmail.com”. and not just joesmith.
you need to know what domain your friend uses for email if you email them
you need to know your friend’s area code if you call or text them
you need to know the password that goes with your username on your computer
not blaming you for your friends struggling with this, just, ugh, how does anyone struggle with this?
Does anyone know good people to follow? I’d rather not join Bluesky.
I joined bluesky because the weather group I followed on Twitter moved there, so deleted twitter and follow them on BLuesky now. Is there a reason not to join bluesky?
Not right now, except that it’s going to follow the same cycle as everything else: good to users at first, good to shareholders at the end.
Build an account on Mastodon if you want to escape the cycle and tangle with different problems ;)
It really is nice there; people seem to like talking to each other about varied things, but it is smaller than Twitter so you may need to be on mastodon for some things and Bluesky for others you can’t get on mastodon
I never really used twitter for more than weather lol, so I’ll make a mastodon account, but I’ll be as active on it as BS. Just don’t get the appeal of the format. Probably why I’m so much more active here than anywhere else.
I would say no* but the asterisk has a few paragraphs involving funding sustainability, cryptobro involvement, and dubious decentralization.
Don’t know who exactly you are interested in, here are some random known accounts:
- the EU commission (other EU institutions as well): https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission
- gog games: https://mastodon.world/@goggames
- The New Stack: https://hachyderm.io/@TheNewStack
- Mozilla: https://mozilla.social/@mozilla
- Rust foundation: https://social.rust-lang.org/@rust
- Free Software Foundation: https://hostux.social/@fsf
- Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://mastodon.social/@eff
- Greta Thunberg: https://mastodon.nu/@gretathunberg
Regarding individuals, I’m following a bunch of software developpers. I’m mostly interested in topics, hence I prefer Lemmy by far.
There’s Fedi.Directory which you pick whatever category of your interest and it list various Fedi account. It’s mostly Mastodon based-account but you get couple other non-mastodon account like PeerTube for example
