I enjoy blogging.

I really do.

It just takes too darn long! I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and can't stand to leave any thought unturned - especially in the context of this blog. (You may have noticed that brevity is not a strength of my prior essays.) On top of that, I tend to get severe writers' block. Consequently, my blog posts are few and far between, and often happen only when the topic is really cool and truly justifies a whole essay on it.

Which is a bit of a shame! I have such a long list of writing ideas that aren't quite fully formed thoughts. It would take effort - too much of it - to turn them into proper blog posts. If only I could package them into neatly-wrapped short-form thoughts and fire them off into the void...

In a different world - say, 2021 - many people might have told me to take my thoughts to Twitter. Here's the thing: I don't really want to do that. Beyond the expected elephant in the room (heh), the entire purpose of developing my personal website was to own my own content. Pushing my thoughts to Twitter would simply lock them away in one of the many walled gardens of corporate social media.

Enter Mastodon

I will confess: for the type of technology nerd I am, I'm late to Mastodon. While not my first rodeo with decentralized social media (that honor goes to the wonderful Matrix protocol and accompanying Element app), I didn't quite realize how much the fundamental ideas behind Mastodon and the larger Fediverse would speak to me. I love a good open source app, and Mastodon certainly is, but even better - it's based on a W3C standard?! Whoa!

That revelation changed my calculus. Setting aside the actual network of people (which we'll get to), control of any social network lies in the underlying protocol. Usually, if that protocol is owned and developed by a single entity, that entity will overwhelmingly control the resulting network. That rule is the default and by design in centralized social networks like Twitter and Facebook - but also some decentralized applications as well. (With apologies to Matrix, this rule definitely seems to be the case there. Though I could be very wrong - I haven't used Matrix as extensively as I perhaps should.)

However, this isn't the case with Mastodon! Underneath the Twitter-like interface, all posts are sent and received using the ActivityPub protocol. I'd never heard of it before, but it's actually owned and managed by the W3C! This means it's effectively as "web-native" as anything, and isn't beholden to the whims of a backer - not Mastodon, nor anyone else. It just exists, ready to be implemented by any app that wants to. Just like HTTP.

That feels pure. It feels permanent, in a way that any individual service or piece of software could never hope to be. I like that a lot.

What about the network?

I may be an idealist sometimes, but I'm not delusional. Social media needs people to work. Mastodon can't hope to win here, right? It's too complicated. Unusable, even! Why would normal people deal with the friction of choosing a homeserver and learning a whole new system for exploring and finding people when existing social media does the same thing pretty well already?

Personally, I don't think these gripes are necessarily dealbreakers, but I also acknowledge that they have merit. Certainly, when up against a network that already has millions of users (many of them noteworthy) and none of the usability drawbacks, it's a little silly to expect (or even hope) for Mastodon to win against it. Indeed, there have been writings pointing out that Mastodon's moment of exponential growth is well and truly over. [1]

But does Mastodon really need to win?

I'd argue no, and I'd encourage you, reader, to rethink what "success" means for a social network.

A Lesson from Mentorship

For the last few years, I've been volunteering as a mentor for the BU Spark! Innovation Fellows program. In a nutshell, it allows students to incubate a project from idea to product in the course of one semester in a class setting - and as part of that, they're connected with mentors of various industry backgrounds to help them along. I think it's super fun - a great opportunity to stay in touch with students, be active in the community, and give back to my alma mater. (I encourage you to participate if the idea also appeals to you - get in touch!)

Social networks, or crowdsourced projects in general, are an extremely common project idea among students in this program. The first few times I saw it, I was pretty unconvinced - what's the point of fleshing out an idea that requires a ton of user acquisition to be useful? But over time, my attitude has changed pretty significantly. I think these ideas can make a lot of sense in the right context: in particular, when the intended user base is a narrow, well-fit demographic that can derive benefit even when only a few people are using the app. Some Spark! projects manage to find that magical demographic; others don't. It's an imperfect science. That's why we're here to mentor!

Mastodon doesn't fit this mold. By any measure, it's meant to be a generalist social network: open to all, with no particular "goal" assigned to its interactions. What it does share with some of the small, extraordinarily targeted networks of the Spark! community is that Mastodon works for the communities that live on it! Nobody should expect everyone to be on Mastodon, but not everyone needs to be. For those communities who have successfully passed the tipping point and made the Fediverse their home, it's hard to argue that Mastodon (or, really, any ActivityPub application/network) is anything besides a success.

Indeed, I've been pleasantly surprised by my own personal experience with Mastodon. I signed up to the Fosstodon instance expecting my timeline to be a ghost town; for a while, it was. (As a lurker on most social media I participate in, "timeline busy-ness" is the primary way I measured Mastodon's value to me.) But I believed in the idea, so I persisted - and, step by step, my network grew. First, it was by following WIRED's excellent guide on searching for Twitter follows that also had Mastodon. Then it was a #FollowFriday post. And then another one! The Verge posted a list of their tech journalists that used Mastodon. I started looking at and following accounts that my network boosted! Almost before I knew it, my timeline was positively bustling with people. Even better, they seemed to stick around.

Fast forward a bit more, and a funny thing happened: I stopped reading Twitter. Sometime in February, I unpinned my third-party Twitter client (RIP) from the homescreen on my phone. This wasn't a proactive "I hate Twitter" move; I just enjoyed spending my time on Mastodon more. Somehow, the Fediverse had won me over.

Leaning Into the Fediverse

So, long story short, I'm on Mastodon now. It satisfies the "Twitter itch" perfectly well, even if only a fraction of the people I want to follow are actually present and active right now. It'd be awesome if more of tech/gadget Twitter made the switch, and it's nigh impossible that CSGO Twitter will become CSGO Mastodon anytime soon - but I can't complain. I've found some communities I really like. And I'm only feeling more confident in my decision as time goes on, especially as more platforms succumb to the "Enshittification of the Internet."

Which brings me back to blogging. As I've mentioned, I'm almost entirely a lurker rather than a poster on most social media I'm on. I don't anticipate that changing too much with Mastodon, but I do want to start posting some of my shorter-form thoughts. I think Mastodon will be a great landing spot for them.

You can find me at @mbestavros@fosstodon.org. I've got follow requests on as a privacy measure, but feel free to send one! Chances are I'll accept it, and maybe even follow you back. Expect occasional random thoughts on tech, gadgets, and urbanism (as is my brand), plus a few boosted posts here and there for good measure. Oh, and links to any new blog posts, of course. Finally, as should be my standard disclaimer, I can't guarantee regularity. But I will be there!

If you're feeling motivated after this read and looking for something to do this weekend, I'd encourage you to join me on the Fediverse too! I can heartily recommend fosstodon.org, my current instance, though you currently need to apply for an account (that said, I doubt they'd turn many people down). Alternatively, if you're a techie type, I've seen a ton of cool people on hachyderm.io and infosec.exchange, and both have open signups. (They also seem pretty well run, with responsive and friendly admins.) Once you have an account, feel free to check my profile for the list of people I follow - I've left it public as of writing in hopes it'll help some of you out. (It'll probably be most helpful if we share a few interests.) Alternatively, make use of the people-finding tips I outlined above.

See you on the Fediverse!

[1] Of course, the article doesn't really acknowledge that the new baseline userbase Mastodon is settling into is multiple times larger than it was before the Great Migration. From my personal experience, that's more than enough to make it feel like a lively place! Mike Masnick and Cory Doctorow have both written great analyses worth reading.

Header courtesy of Geran de Klerk on Unsplash