Flipping Birdsite the Bird

Good Morning Friends! It is time once again for my semi-annual explainer post about the Fediverse or as some call it Mastodon. In truth, I am not going to do a full explainer because I did one back in April and I am not sure I can do a better job than I did then. If you are like most of us and have littered the fediverse with many past versions of yourself as you tried out many instances, then this post might be of interest about migrating between sites. As I said in the post from April, I originally joined the fediverse during the Wheaton Exodus of 2018, but it seems like every six months or so there is another mass influx of folks discovering/re-discovering the platform. Of note… while I jokingly refer to it as the Wheaton Exodus, I mostly got hip to the notion of “mastodon” due to all of the Loading Ready Run cast moving to various sundry instances. It does make me wonder if anyone is out there tracking the migratory patterns of Twitter users.

So You Decided to Leave Twitter

Yeah, I guess I am going to write about this today, but given that I already linked you better articles that I have already written I am not sure where to go with this one. I think first it is important that you understand that the Fediverse as I refer to it, or Mastodon as the media seems to refer to it… is not a single website controlled by a single entity. There is no one corporation responsible for running everything, but instead a network for smaller “instances” that are “federated” so that they can share messages with each other and facilitate cross-instance communication. What this means in practice is that the Fediverse is not a monolith with a single culture, but instead a bunch of different smaller communities that each have their own cultures. Probably a better analogy would be for you to imagine that users on the World of Warcraft Forum, Something Awful Forum, GameFaqs, and Reddit could somehow seamlessly communicate with each other.

Firstly I feel like I want to get this out of the way. This is not a post attempting to recruit you to the Fediverse. I am happy to welcome you with open arms to this alternate dimension, but it isn’t the sort of thing where you unplug from Twitter and plug into the Fediverse and life continues on like normal. Using these instances is its own thing with its own series of differences that go far deeper than the tweet vs toot thing. Image a server instance as a small computer club that meets in the back room of your library, that deals with all sorts of logistical problems inherent with growing membership and outgrowing its meeting room space. Instances in general are run by a very small group of administrators that are struggling to pay the bills and are happy to have you… but also know that each influx is going to wreak havoc on their data usage.

Finding a Home

I’ve bounced around quite a bit during my time in the fediverse, but this is sort of a thing that happens to most people. They join an instance and it doesn’t end up feeling right for one reason or another. My own journey looks a little bit like this:

• Mastodon.cloud – My very first instance and I had no clue what any of it meant at that point, or that I wasn’t signing up for one single monolithic site. It was perfectly cromulent.
• Elekk.xyz – Once I learned different instances and did different things, I obviously tried to gravitate toward the gaming-related one. It was a pretty nice place with a bunch of interesting users that I still follow to this day.
• Nineties.Cafe – My friend Liore wanted to start up an instance so I signed on this nonsense to help administrate it. This meant leaving Elekk behind, but since you can so easily migrate between instances it was no big deal.
• MMORPG.Social – As Ninteties.Cafe had run through its cycle of excitement, and a friend of mine Gazimoff decided he wanted to try and tackle creating MMORPG-centric social media. I moved houses once again and helped administrate, but the costs eventually became egregious and it was shuttered.
• Elekk.xyz – So I migrated back to Elekk and mostly went to sleep for a while, going dormant for a year or so. When I woke up and started caring about the fediverse again, the instance was a very changed place. It seems that there was a bit of a “netsplit” to borrow an old term, and Elekk was pretty proactively blocking a bunch of instances making it very hard to communicate with friends spread throughout the fediverse.
• Mstdn.social – This led me to try and find a more neutral ground instance. One that was not quite so block-happy but also was not doing anything egregious that would lead to it being actively blocked. So I migrated over to this lovely instance run by a nice person who goes by Stux.

I fully expect that most of you are going to go through a sequence of events similar to the ones that I did. At this point, I would maybe shoo people away from rolling on Mastodon.social, because while it is the largest instance and considered the “flagship” it is also largely lawless. Nothing has been done about abusive members for long enough that the community took it upon itself and caused the problems that ultimately led me to leave Elekk. Basically, if you choose to use that one, just know that there is going to be a wide swath of people who won’t be able to see you.

Maybe Support If You Stick Around

Like I said before each instance is usually run by a very small team that is racking up expenses in order to keep the lights on. Knowing this I have always tried to chip something into wherever I am calling home. When I was on Elekk I contributed to their Patreon, and when I moved to Mstdn.social I started contributing to the one Stux has set up. Like it isn’t a large amount of money but I end up chipping in $5 a month as a way of attempting to help the operation. It doesn’t give me any benefits other than knowing that I am at least helping to keep the lights on a little bit. Most of these instances are not profitable and are deeply cutting into the personal finances of those who are running them.

Each time there is a mass migration wave, more folks end up sticking around. Something you should go into this knowing is that the vast majority of “I’m leaving Twitter” folks will be back within the week. However, what has evolved over time is an alternate reality that skews way more liberal and queer and as a result super open and accepting about some things and hypercritical of other things. I feel like if you want to come to the Fediverse, you are going to need to accept it for what it is and not try and turn it into Twitter 2.0. The folks are really lovely but also a heck of a lot quieter. There is less general noise on the network, but also much less interaction.

Riding the Bomb Down

I’ve personally found a place in my life for both Twitter and the Fediverse/Mastodon. I have no plans to do anything drastic like delete my Twitter account. If folks legitimately migrate this time then I will likely spend less and less time there. I feel it is also very important for folks to realize the level of stress these mass migration waves place upon the existing denizens of these instances. Like they are all open and welcoming but have been through this shit so many times before. I know alone this is my fourth or fifth mass migration, and I know they existed prior to the Wheaton Exodus that brought me to these shores. On some level, the “townies” often duck out for a few weeks until the onslaught has died down a bit and then poke their heads out again to see who actually stuck around.

Please note while this post is not an attempt to recruit you, it is also not an attempt to dissuade you. Whether or not you take this adventure is entirely up to you. I am more than happy to field direct questions from anyone considering it. Like I said before I’ve written about this several times in the past and some of my words might fill in gaps in your knowledge. So I will leave you with a list of links.

• My Home in the Fediverse – @belghast@mstdn.social
• The Fediverse: A Wildly Incomplete Primer – my post from April attempting to explain how exactly Mastodon and the larger Fediverse work.
• Moving Your Home Fediverse Instance – a follow-up post where I talk about the process of migrating your follows and redirecting people to your new home instance. This is helpful if you have a string of other attempts to move off Twitter.
• Adventures in the Fediverse – might be fun to read to see how my tone has shifted over the years since this original post back in August of 2018. I was way more excited about this being the future of all social media, whereas now I am pretty resigned to knowing it will only take hold with a handful of people.

Keep Up Alternate Contacts

I will close this out with the last piece of general advice, one that I have learned the hard way over the years. If you care about someone enough to not want to lose contact with them… trade multiple forms of contact. There are numerous folks that I have lost over the years through various gaming venues, and I occasionally wonder how they are doing. I know email is old school, but it and phone numbers tend to be the lowest common denominator for staying in contact. I’ve had the same email address for almost twenty years, and at this point moving to another would be painful. Discord is another more modern messaging platform that is worth trading information on, but remember it is also a closed platform owned by a single company and could at someday be the thing you are fleeing.

For me, you will always have this blog. I am going on my fourteenth year and I figure much like Slim Pickens I am going to be riding this bomb to the ground. This will always have some cogent way of contacting me available to you.