A deep dive into Mastodon
Elephant in the Room
Get started with free microblogging, interact with others who share you interests, and even help expand the Fediverse with your own Mastodon instance.
Recent affairs at Twitter have led to resounding and sudden success for the free, open, and federated Mastodon [1] social media platform. But despite the apparent benefit of Twitter's mismanagement, Mastodon's success was bound to happen sometime. As Cory Doctorow explains in one of his many eye-opening essays [2], proprietary, centralized, and for-profit social media platforms always kill themselves. Mastodon and other open platforms will fill in the vacuum they leave in their wake.
Mastodon Is Not Twitter
Thinking of Mastodon as a stand-in for Twitter will leave newcomers confused. Sure, on the surface, Mastodon is a microblogging social media platform, and you could use it a such. But, as Max Leibman points out, assuming that Mastodon is just like Twitter is the first of the two fundamental errors people make.
Mastodon taps into and inherits all the advantages of the Fediverse. It is not only distributed, but massively distributed. This means no controlling entity can mess with your content or push sponsored posts onto your feed. Although a company can buy up individual servers, it will be hard for Mastodon, as an ever-expanding network of interconnected, but independent instances, to be bought out.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Bottlenecks Discovered by Meta Engineers Lead to Scalability Improvements
Thanks to a small group of engineers at Meta, the Linux kernel module kernfs has been improved, which has led to some serious gains.
-
PwnEscape Poses VM Vulnerability
A guest-to-host escape flaw in Linux KVM, named PwnEscape, might be yet another means of attacking Linux.
-
Linux Mint 27 Set for a Christmas Release
The developers behind Linux Mint have announced a Christmas release, and it looks like Santa's sack will be brimming with features.
-
Is Linus Torvalds Vibe Coding?
The creator of Linux has added AI into his process for Linux kernel development, and it's more than just for debugging.
-
openKylin 3.0 Released with Expanded AI Integration
The latest release features a pre-installed AI agent to help perform tasks.
-
DigitalOcean Ends Open Source Credits Program
In a change that has surprised many open source developers, DigitalOcean has decided to sunset its Open Source Credits Program.
-
Office 365 Available for Testing on Linux via Bottles
Linux users can now test the official Office 365, thanks to Mirko Brombin's work on Bottles.
-
Dutch Government Turns to Open Source for Digital Sovereignty
Following in the footsteps of other European countries, the Netherlands is looking to increase its sovereign digital infrastructure with open source software.
-
Linux May Soon Work on Snapdragon X2-Based PCs
If you're thinking about buying a Snapdragon X2-based desktop or laptop, Linux may soon be an option.
-
KDE for People Initiative Calls for AI Ban in Plasma
A new community of KDE wants the project to adopt a strict no-AI policy for KDE Plasma.