# Mastodon Servers?



## dijon (Nov 18, 2022)

Posting in 'Newbie Questions' since I don't know where this should go: 

Like many of us, I'm looking into Mastodon as an alternative to that other place. I'd like to pick a home server that has mostly composers and musicians, but my searches haven't been successful. Are any of you Mastodonians? Where do you hang your hat over there?


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## John Longley (Nov 18, 2022)

I can’t even get it to load half the time. 30 second wait after each click at one point today. Hoping they scale up their bandwidth to handle new users. Let us know if you find a good server, I couldn’t see anything for music.


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## elucid (Nov 18, 2022)

I just joined. Not sure it matters what server you join, does it? You can still access everyone on all other servers, I think.


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## cafebabe (Nov 18, 2022)

John Longley said:


> I can’t even get it to load half the time. 30 second wait after each click at one point today. Hoping they scale up their bandwidth to handle new users. Let us know if you find a good server, I couldn’t see anything for music.


What instance are you using? Not to sound patronizing, since I have no idea which one you chose, but I figure it's worth covering the topic a bit since I am sure it'll at least be helpful to someone reading.

I commonly see people signing up on the first thing that appears when searching "Mastodon". But In a similar sense to how despite Vi-Control using XenForo, the characteristics of the site, aside from just the content, can be very different from other XenForo-based forums.

However, unlike traditional forum software and such, like XenForo, vBulletin, etc., Mastodon is federated, so by default, you can interact with and access content on other instances and vice-versa. 

There are some forks of the Mastodon code that allow for things like optional "local posting" so that some messages do not get federated to the broader network (e.g., imagine you're part of a vulnerable minority group and truly may want/need a "safe space" at times to talk about specific issues that people may see as controversial, or don't want to open up those messages to potential trolls, etc). Local posting allows for smaller subgroups more akin to traditional forums than Twitter in that you would never see the posts unless you went to their forum (or, in this case, their instance).

That said, likely for the general health of the network, to prevent too many ultra-localized communities from existing unnecessarily and locking the majority of the content behind closed doors, this is not something that exists in the main Mastodon code, and so there's not much of a need to be on the most popular instances; for the most part, the instance you're on does not affect the content available.

In that sense, I suggest finding a less-popular instance that is less likely to be overwhelmed by massive surges, like the current influx from Twitter. 

Personally, I would prioritize things in this order:


How well run the site is in terms of security and infrastructure; you want to be on a well-maintained instance, just as you don't want to use a forum that runs on a slow server with unmaintained software.
How likely that particular instance is to unexpectedly disappear in the future; while Mastodon is federated and a single site shutting down won't be the end of the world, as with other federated systems like email, if your provider shutdown without warning to transfer to another instance, you'd be in a little bit of trouble. 
Moderation of the instance. Find something that aligns well with your views; you may not want to tolerate particular behavior or disagree that moderators should police specific behavior. As with traditional forums, this matters more, IMO, than the intended content; power-tripping moderators or racist users could ruin your experience despite the particular niche being something you're interested in (e.g., music).
The intended niche or demographics. While Mastodon is federated, your local timeline will be mostly of people you follow (regardless of instance) and people on your instance; in that sense, joining a political-focused site on the polar opposite side of your views is probably a bad idea.

As overwhelming as all of that may sound, given we're all here, I completely believe we're all capable of taking that ~15-20 minutes or so to find something more-or-less ideal for us. It'll be worth it!

And that annoyance/complexity brings tangible benefits over something like Twitter. A single company, government, or person cannot ruin or control the experience. Societal views changing over time, and perhaps no longer aligning with you, does not affect you nearly as significantly via moderation, etc. Additionally, tighter-knit communities tend to have friendlier people who post better content.




dijon said:


> Posting in 'Newbie Questions' since I don't know where this should go:
> 
> Like many of us, I'm looking into Mastodon as an alternative to that other place. I'd like to pick a home server that has mostly composers and musicians, but my searches haven't been successful. Are any of you Mastodonians? Where do you hang your hat over there?


Personally, I'm on Hachyderm. It's well-run. But, it's overwhelmingly tech people. You might want to try using the instance finder on instances.social if you haven't already.

And another thing to note is that you could totally register on one place temporarily that isn't _quite_ what you want; Mastodon offers you the ability to transfer your account from one instance to another, so you will retain your followers and followed accounts, etc.

If you can't find anything perfect right now, you may be best off finding something that nails most of the bullet points I mentioned earlier, and then asking other people on Mastodon itself, or searching #music, #piano, etc on Mastodon and seeing which instances others commonly post from, and then transferring over to theirs later.

Also, while on the topic, there's other cool federated software, like Lemmy, which integrates with Mastodon and acts more similarly to Reddit than Twitter; would be cool to see someone start something music-focused using it.


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## dijon (Nov 19, 2022)

After about 30 minutes I've come to the conclusion that mastodon.social is the 'top level' general site and none of the others have the same level of discovery. E.G. If I join a server called 'composers.chat' (not a thing, yet) - People have no idea that I'm even talking about mastodon. I wouldn't click on that person's link.

I understand that niche communities are great for discussion - that's why I'm on VI-C. Social networks are also about discovery. If the social network is fragmented, or federated, in mastodon speak - then discovery from outside the network becomes that much harder.

I also understand that regardless of which server you choose, you can still interact with anyone and everyone. But - that initial link you give out - isn't a mastodon link. If I put @[email protected] in my Twitter bio, that's a whole lot different than @[email protected].

Does the fact that mastodon.social has only 240k users, and is now closed for registration, imply that there's already gatekeeping going on? It sure feels like it.


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## d.healey (Nov 19, 2022)

dijon said:


> imply that there's already gatekeeping going on? It sure feels like it.


Each server has its own gate keepers. If you want no gatekeeping at all then you need to setup your own server.


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## JJP (Nov 19, 2022)

dijon said:


> Does the fact that mastodon.social has only 240k users, and is now closed for registration, imply that there's already gatekeeping going on? It sure feels like it.


The whole point of Mastodon is to not have everybody on one server. There are many servers with less than 100 people.

Also, servers frequently are run by individuals or small groups of people. Some are closing off new members because they can’t handle all the work to maintain such large numbers of users on their servers.

Several servers do manually check every new registration and have firm rules about what can and can not be posted or shared. If you don’t like that, then that’s not the server for you.


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## d.healey (Nov 19, 2022)




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## dijon (Nov 19, 2022)

Thank you @d.healey , that was actually very helpful. I've been trying to equate the two and looking for, as he says in the video, 'a drop in replacement'.


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## Øivind (Nov 19, 2022)

dijon said:


> Does the fact that mastodon.social has only 240k users, and is now closed for registration, imply that there's already gatekeeping going on? It sure feels like it.


Mastodon has seen a huge number of new users lately, over 500 thousand new users just in the past week. The servers can't handle it, so I believe that some have halted new signups while updating their infrastructure. 

George Takei already got over 100k followers after 2-3 days XD


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## cafebabe (Nov 19, 2022)

dijon said:


> After about 30 minutes I've come to the conclusion that mastodon.social is the 'top level' general site and none of the others have the same level of discovery. E.G. If I join a server called 'composers.chat' (not a thing, yet) - People have no idea that I'm even talking about mastodon. I wouldn't click on that person's link.
> 
> I understand that niche communities are great for discussion - that's why I'm on VI-C. Social networks are also about discovery. If the social network is fragmented, or federated, in mastodon speak - then discovery from outside the network becomes that much harder.
> 
> ...


Regarding discovery, you're not totally off the mark there. In my opinion, probably the worst thing about Mastodon is finding the accounts of people whom you already know but don't know on Mastodon; it can be a little difficult because you can't as easily search for someone like you can on Twitter across all instances.

However, that is mitigated a little bit by the concept of those niches. If you're on an incredibly large instance, your local timeline is also going to be significantly more crowded and the discovery of individual messages by accident will be more difficult, whereas if you're on a smaller, more target instance the chances of someone not searching for something specific who'd be interested in what you have to say bumping into you goes up.

Regarding the concept of 'links', I think it will matter even less with more users and more familiarity. It's not all that dissimilar to email in the sense that anyone can run their own email server or use their own domain; my personal emails are all some variation of [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]. I never have any trouble emailing anyone or having anyone recognize my address as an email address—it's something people are used to.

As it stands right now, you can generally copy-and-paste @[email protected] into the Mastodon search bar and you'll pop up with a follow option. And if someone specifically goes to a particular link on composers.chat and sees a message of yours, if they go to follow you, there are simple on-screen instructions for how to do that if you're part of a different instance.

Additionally, if you haven't already seen the official Mastodon page on discoverability, it might be worth checking out.

Also, while these sites feel a little ancient and are not exactly a solution to the issue, there are a couple of hand-curated lists of users across different topics which may be worth checking out and possibly submitting your accounts. See Trunk and Fedi.Directory (also worth noting that due to the origins of Mastodon, these kinds of lists are significantly less popular with non-tech-related people - e.g., compare the size of "linux" on Trunk vs. "musicians")

And lastly, on the topic of gatekeeping, as @Øivind noted, the issue is not so much intentional gatekeeping as much as "holy shit, suddenly, overnight, millions more visitors than usual are here and we need more hardware, more moderators, and some unexpected architectural changes to deal with that; let's lock this down a little for now so my instance doesn't totally melt". The mastodon.social instance has a user limit that gets bumped occasionally, but yes, that particular one is closed right now. I imagine it will be increased again once things settle down more.

But also yes, there is more intentional 'gatekeeping' in the sense that, as @JJP mentioned, you really don't want everyone on the same instance, otherwise you're recreating all the same issues that Twitter has. And even in federated networks, having any one particular instance grow absurdly large can have negative consequences to the network as a whole. This can be seen with things like email where, for personal email, Google and Microsoft hold such significant power that if you can't deliver to an @gmail.com or @live.com/@outlook.com/@hotmail.com email, then you're in big trouble, which makes it harder for individuals to run their own email servers. 

So, imo, as annoying as it may be to see things like mastodon.social temporarily closed, it's for the better of everyone.


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## José Herring (Nov 19, 2022)

That other place has become a frightening mess. I've been trying to close the account now for a month and every time I'm in that 30 grace period it sends me some weird security alert that makes me panic and open it back up again only to find out there was no breach.

Now because I responded to some nuts over this past election its just over run with right wingers trying to push every conspiracy theory and "stop the steal" crackpot. I've blocked and muted almost everybody posting this kind of stuff yet the hits keep coming.

Mastodon may not be ready or setup for the huge influx of traffic it is getting as that other place goes off the deep end.


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## cuttime (Nov 19, 2022)

José Herring said:


> That other place has become a frightening mess. I've been trying to close the account now for a month and every time I'm in that 30 grace period it sends me some weird security alert that makes me panic and open it back up again only to find out there was no breach.
> 
> Now because I responded to some nuts over this past election its just over run with right wingers trying to push every conspiracy theory and "stop the steal" crackpot. I've blocked and muted almost everybody posting this kind of stuff yet the hits keep coming.
> 
> Mastodon may not be ready or setup for the huge influx of traffic it is getting as that other place goes off the deep end.


I'm still using Twitter. I use lists almost always. It is a good way to cut through the crap. It's only when examining a trending topic that you approach at your own risk. It is still useful for the moment, but things may quickly change.


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## TWY (Nov 20, 2022)

"Over on Mastodon - the obscure refuge to which liberal journalists are fleeing in fear of free speech even though they can't figure it out - they're already banning each other over the most trivial infractions.

It's like a laboratory to study how censorship-happy rats behave."

- Glenn Greenwald


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## proggermusic (Nov 20, 2022)

Yep, that sounds like Glenn Greenwald!

Anyhow, Mastodon's protocol is very well-thought-out, and I think it's a pretty cool system. I was never a big Twitter user, but my wife was (often professionally), and she's been loving Mastodon. I haven't been using it all that much, and it doesn't seem like there's a big community of musicians/composers yet, so joining any of the general-use servers will be a perfectly fine way to get started. You can still search the "federated" servers for posts about whatever you're interested in.


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## gsilbers (Nov 20, 2022)

HAs anyone used countersocial app? 
seems ok.


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## SchnookyPants (Nov 20, 2022)

I didn't think they even had _restaurants _in the ice age.


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## Øivind (Nov 20, 2022)

This can be used to check if anyone you follow or follow you on Twitter has a Fediverse account https://fedifinder.glitch.me/

As with anything on the internet, use at your own risk.


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## timprebble (Nov 20, 2022)

José Herring said:


> That other place has become a frightening mess. I've been trying to close the account now for a month and every time I'm in that 30 grace period it sends me some weird security alert that makes me panic and open it back up again only to find out there was no breach.
> 
> Now because I responded to some nuts over this past election its just over run with right wingers trying to push every conspiracy theory and "stop the steal" crackpot. I've blocked and muted almost everybody posting this kind of stuff yet the hits keep coming.



re lists
I also use Tweeten app (it replaced Tweetdeck) so each list has its own column, with no ads...





Tweeten, a powerful Twitter client







tweetenapp.com





But to avoid spam/garbage on Twitter its important to mute words & phrases as much as people.
eg if you dont want to hear anything about the orange idiot, muting or blocking his account is not enough - you also need to mute use of his sir name, and any of their hashtags or phrases.


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## Tim_Wells (Nov 21, 2022)

Can I ask a dumb question? I've never used Twitter, so excuse my ignorance. I have no desire to use it (especially now!). And I piss away enough time on here and various other sites.

Here's the dumb question: Why can't people use Instagram, Reddit, or something similar? 
Is there a technical reason? Something about the way Twitter works?
Or is because they don't want to feed the Silicon Valley billionaires?


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## elucid (Nov 21, 2022)

All the platforms are different and suit different ways to communicate - and they attract different kinds of people. 

Just like this forum, Twitter is great at creating (dare I say it?) healthy echo chambers - groups of like-minded people who can express and compare their views without being shot to pieces. Of course, it also famously has very unhealthy echo chambers (IMO) and there is an abyss full of hate waiting to devour the unwary. But you can avoid that for the most part if you want.

Insta and Reddit are totally unlike Twitter. 

You're right: getting away from billionaires is definitely a huge thing for the people I know on Twitter - Insta is Zuckerberg so that's never going to get a look in for many of them (including me).


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## proggermusic (Nov 21, 2022)

Not a dumb question at all, and @elucid summed it up really well. I found Facebook useful in the past for propagating my own musical groups and exploits, but it's deteriorated a lot. I tried to use Twitter for that purpose and it never really worked. Reddit can be fun, but it's basically news headlines tailored to your interests, and discussion of that news. Instagram can be good for musicians but I still don't find it all that great.

Fora like this have been much more valuable to me over the years. Lower quantity and higher quality of information and discussion. VIC in particular is pretty awesome! I don't foresee Mastodon or any other general-interest social media platform/protocol to replace things like this for people with strong focused interests.


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## dijon (Nov 22, 2022)

After a lot of reading about Mastodon, it seems like enough of a different take on Twitter that it might not be for me. I guess I'm looking for a more centralized replacement, with discovery being the main priority. I decided Hive Social looked like the closest thing. They're having a bit of a rush right now so who knows how it will all shake out. The worst case scenario is I just spend less time on social media which, honestly I wouldn't miss.


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## jojo_72 (Nov 23, 2022)

Does it make sense to sign in two different servers? Is it common on Mastodon to have two profiles?


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## d.healey (Nov 24, 2022)

jojo_72 said:


> Does it make sense to sign in two different servers? Is it common on Mastodon to have two profiles?


You just need one account with one server unless you are two people.


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## xanderscores (Saturday at 2:07 AM)

jojo_72 said:


> Does it make sense to sign in two different servers? Is it common on Mastodon to have two profiles?


As I understand it, registering on two servers creates two separate profiles. I use two different profiles for separate topics like local news stuff on one server, and one music/film/entertainment/composition profile on the other. You don't need to do that, though, unless you feel the urge to keep your bubbles/posts/followers/interactions separate.


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## xanderscores (Saturday at 2:12 AM)

btw - just an idea: Would it make sense to have a thread with profiles for those who want to follow each other on Mastodon? Or, as an alternative, is there a common hashtag for people on this forum to be found by?


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## proggermusic (Saturday at 9:14 AM)

Hey, why not start in this thread? I'll go first! I haven't been on Mastodon much lately but I'm still planning to check in as it grows and maybe post some projects there over time. I'm here: @[email protected]


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## xanderscores (Sunday at 7:14 AM)

I did a bit of research on Mastodon and the Fediverse, and there seems to be one big caveat that no one talks about much: the search feature. Apparently, you can't search posts across multiple/all server instances (neither by string nor by hashtag), which means you won't be able to find other people's #music #composition #soundtrack #composer #whatever posts unless they happen to be on your server (which is unlikely given the number of servers). So I guess this makes Mastodon pretty much useless as a tool to connect people unless they have already decided to follow each other in the first place.

I'm curious if anyone can confirm this conclusion.


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## jbuhler (Sunday at 7:30 AM)

xanderscores said:


> I did a bit of research on Mastodon and the Fediverse, and there seems to be one big caveat that no one talks about much: the search feature. Apparently, you can't search posts across multiple/all server instances (neither by string nor by hashtag), which means you won't be able to find other people's #music #composition #soundtrack #composer #whatever posts unless they happen to be on your server (which is unlikely given the number of servers). So I guess this makes Mastodon pretty much useless as a tool to connect people unless they have already decided to follow each other in the first place.
> 
> I'm curious if anyone can confirm this conclusion.


This is true as far as I’m aware. Search functionality on mastodon is restricted to hashtags. So you could connect by tagging music posts with proper hashtags. But restrictive search thus has positive and negative aspects. Mastodon also does not allow quote toots as embeds like Twitter does, which often makes a certain mode of conversation difficult.


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