Been trying out the social network (or rather network of social networks) Mastodon this weekend.
Primarily this has been to replace Twitter. But since I’ve never been an avid tweeter (or tw*t, as some might say), that’s really an ulterior motive. What I’ve been after for a while is an Instagram and Facebook alternative.
This could be it. With a very strong emphasis on could. If enough people – that I want to be in touch with, one way or another – join some Mastodon instance, and thus it reaches critical mass, then I think Instagram, and ultimatly Facebook has had it…
That it’s decentralised and open source makes it extra enticing.
Mastodon is relying on #hashtags to work (much like Instagram) so be sure to follow a few of your interests using the corresponding hashtags, and find a few people to follow (like on Twitter), and your Home feed (called timeline) should become interesting quite fast. (The Local and Federated feeds are just too insane right now, IMO, but with some additional filtering it might be cool.)
About Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org
Help, and lots of information: https://mastodon.help/en
I’m on mastodon.social, one of the bigger Instances (there are countless others, catering a wide range of interests and locations).
My profile: https://mastodon.social/@xiaolasse
One unexpected side-effect: I’ve been brushing up on my German, since mastadon.social is hosted in Germany (and run by the initial developer), there are lots of German speaking “tooters”, and – unless you filter them out – there are quite a few posts in German. I try to read them, and hit the “translate” feature if I’m uncertain.