{"id":2477,"date":"2023-03-25T19:44:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-25T19:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/?p=2477"},"modified":"2023-03-25T19:44:25","modified_gmt":"2023-03-25T19:44:25","slug":"choosing-an-instance-for-your-fediverse-mastodon-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2023\/03\/choosing-an-instance-for-your-fediverse-mastodon-account\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing an instance for your Fediverse\/Mastodon account"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\"><em>The Fediverse, running on Mastodon software &amp; other software, is like a sort of grass-roots, often-friendlier Twitter-alikey.\u00a0 It&#8217;s becoming increasingly popular as people leave Twitter.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re thinking of getting an account there, and wondering where to set it up, you might be interested in the things I thought about when I did the same.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/ChoosingAnInstance.png\" alt=\"Fediverse logo: five different-coloured blobs, each connected by coloured lines to each of the others.at the points. The overall effect is a sort of rainbow star inside a pentagon. Beside it is text: Choosing an instance for your Fediverse\/Mastodon account.\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Unlike Twitter, which is all one thing, the Fediverse is made up of lots of separate sites which send messages to each other.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard it said that it doesn&#8217;t matter which <strong>instance<\/strong> (sometimes called a <strong>server<\/strong>) you pick to make your account on, because they all connect.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a grain of truth in that:\u00a0 it&#8217;s easy to follow people from other instances, and the software can in principle talk to all the other thousands of sites which use the same technical protocol (called ActivityPub).<\/p>\n<p>But I basically disagree that it &#8220;doesn&#8217;t matter&#8221;.\u00a0 Instead, here are the things I would consider:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is this instance <strong>well-moderated<\/strong>?<\/li>\n<li>Is it <strong>likely to last<\/strong>?\u00a0 (only because moving is a bother &#8211; not that you <em>can&#8217;t<\/em> move to another one.\u00a0 Some people do hop on &#8220;any old where&#8221; to get started, then move instances after a month or two, once they&#8217;ve got the lay of the land.)<\/li>\n<li>Who will be your &#8220;<strong>local neighbours<\/strong>&#8220;?\u00a0 i.e. other people on that instance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To elaborate on those factors, and add a couple more&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Is this instance well-moderated?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Moderation is handled locally, even if the trouble comes from afar.\u00a0 This means that <strong>trust in your admin team<\/strong> is a key variable.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve experienced prejudice around a particular aspect of your life, you probably want mods who understand that territory.\u00a0 You want them to be able to recognise subtle &#8220;dog-whistles&#8221;, or make the right judgement call about a borderline &#8220;to block, or not to block&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>You can get an initial sense of how they handle things by reading the <strong>instance rules or guidelines<\/strong>, usually shown on its About page. \u00a0 Make sure you like their rules :-)<\/p>\n<p>You can also look at the main admin person&#8217;s own account, and on some servers, there&#8217;ll be a list of the other moderators too.<\/p>\n<p>You might peek at the <strong>number of accounts<\/strong> on that instance, because a big instance with only a few mods isn&#8217;t necessarily going to be sustainable.\u00a0 All my accounts (I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/scicomm.xyz\/@unchartedworlds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">now<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/sunny.garden\/@booktrail\">got<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/musicians.today\/@NBFSOrchestra\">three<\/a>, for different things) are on instances of a few thousand people, and I&#8217;d be initially a bit wary of the ones with <em>tens<\/em> of thousands.<\/p>\n<p>(For this very reason, some of the i.m.o.-best sites limit their size and are closed to newcomers &#8211; which can be frustrating for the newcomers.\u00a0 Some are closed &#8220;in general&#8221;, but have invite codes which can be given out by someone already there.)<\/p>\n<p>If you pick an instance with bad moderation, it&#8217;s not just that you might encounter more dodgy posts.\u00a0 The overall Fediverse is &#8220;made of&#8221; connections between instances.\u00a0 If users on <em>your<\/em> instance are generating dodgy stuff and the admins aren&#8217;t squashing it, then eventually other instances can decide to disconnect from your whole instance &#8211; known as defederation.<\/p>\n<p>This is a good thing overall!\u00a0 It&#8217;s part of the resilience of the Fediverse that it&#8217;s easy to disconnect from a dodgy subsection.\u00a0 This is a big part of why there&#8217;s less random abuse on there compared to Twitter.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just that you don&#8217;t wanna be <em>in<\/em> one of the places that&#8217;s eventually going to be cut off.\u00a0 In a sense, your connection with the rest of the Fediverse depends on <em>your<\/em> admins being trusted by <em>other<\/em> admins.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Is this instance likely to last<\/strong>?<\/h2>\n<p>Many admins have signed up to an agreement that if their instance ever needs to shut down, they&#8217;ll give three months&#8217; notice, to give people time to move.\u00a0 And it&#8217;s built into the software that you can export your follower list &amp; following list, and bring them to a different instance.<\/p>\n<p>Still, even though you <em>can<\/em> move, it&#8217;s less bother if you don&#8217;t have to.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think you can ever be <em>perfectly<\/em> sure about this factor, because stuff happens.\u00a0 But you could give a little look at:\u00a0 do these admins seem generally well-organised?\u00a0 And do they have a wider team around them, or anything written already about succession planning for if they personally had to stop?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Who will be your &#8220;local neighbours&#8221;?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>i.e. other people on that instance.<\/p>\n<p>Those are the people you&#8217;ll most easily be able to discover, and who will find it easiest to discover <em>you<\/em>, because of the way posts get gradually passed around the Fediverse.\u00a0 (More on this another time.)\u00a0 There&#8217;s even a thing called the &#8220;Local timeline&#8221;, to help you to see who else is on your instance.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>If there are people you already know you want to follow, what instance are <em>they<\/em> on?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>This is relevant for two reasons.<\/p>\n<p>The main reason is that if several of your friends are already on the same instance and they think it&#8217;s okay, it&#8217;s a pretty good clue that you&#8217;d find it okay yourself.<\/p>\n<p>(At the time of writing, there&#8217;s a useful bit of software which you can run on your Twitter account, to see if any of your Twitter contacts have Fedi-style addresses shown in their Twitter profiles:\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/fedifinder.glitch.me\/\">Fedifinder<\/a>.\u00a0 However, Twitter has already intentionally broken previous similar things by cutting off their access, so this one may not last long either.)<\/p>\n<p>The other reason, less often relevant, is the defederation possibility, as mentioned above.\u00a0 Most of the time for most people, this won&#8217;t come up, but I&#8217;ll give an outline anyway.<\/p>\n<p><em>Typically<\/em>, the instances which get defederated by others are the ones not bothering (or not managing) to moderate bad behaviour from their users.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a way to protect the rest of the fediverse from having to see their nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>But there can also be more nuanced political disputes, like for example &#8220;we&#8217;re seeing that this other instance is journalism-themed, and we don&#8217;t want journalists from the mainstream media following our users, therefore we&#8217;re going to defederate from their instance&#8221;.\u00a0 And this occasionally comes up as a practical reason why you can&#8217;t follow someone.\u00a0 For example, if you <em>did<\/em> want to follow one of the journalists in that example, you&#8217;d want to be on an instance which <em>hasn&#8217;t<\/em> blocked their instance.<\/p>\n<p>Some instances show their entire lists of &#8220;we&#8217;ve blocked these other instances&#8221; on the About page, so you can see exactly what you&#8217;re getting.\u00a0 It can be reassuring:\u00a0 for example, if you see &#8220;this site was blocked for homophobia&#8221;, you know your admins aren&#8217;t gonna put up with that.\u00a0 Some don&#8217;t show these lists (I&#8217;m not sure why &#8211; maybe sometimes it&#8217;s caution about retaliation).<\/p>\n<p>So, if you want to be absolutely sure you won&#8217;t be community-level disconnected from someone, be on the same instance as they are (if possible).\u00a0 And if you want to be <em>pretty<\/em> sure, then take into account the rules and general philosophy of the instance you&#8217;re considering signing up on, and think:\u00a0 do these mods seem <em>likely<\/em> to defederate from the instance your other person is on?<\/p>\n<p>However, like I said, most of the time for most people this won&#8217;t be an issue&#8230; despite the <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@MissingThePt\/109817611656635863\">jokes<\/a> about it :-)<\/p>\n<p>(&#8220;<span class=\"quote\">Choosing a Mastodon instance is easy once you understand each instance\u2019s values, customs, belief systems, and inter-instance alliances and feuds dating back 1,000 years.<\/span>&#8221;\u00a0 Ha :-) )<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Does the instance have a theme?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Some instances have a particular theme or topic;\u00a0 some don&#8217;t, and are just &#8220;general&#8221;.\u00a0 And if they <em>do<\/em> have a theme, they vary as to whether members are supposed to have some <em>specific<\/em> connection with it, or whether you can join if you&#8217;re just <em>interested<\/em> in it.<\/p>\n<p>For example, <a href=\"http:\/\/sunny.garden\">sunny.garden<\/a> is &#8220;<span class=\"quote\">for indie creators who draw, write, design, program, play, sing or build, their friends and family, and anyone else who thinks that sounds like a nice place to be!<\/span>&#8221;\u00a0 Meanwhile, <a href=\"http:\/\/musicians.today\">musicians.today<\/a> says &#8220;<span class=\"quote\">You don&#8217;t have to be a professional musician to join, but you should at least play an instrument or sing as a hobby.<\/span>&#8221;\u00a0 And <a href=\"http:\/\/union.place\">union.place<\/a> says &#8220;<span class=\"quote\">The Union Place is union-oriented and intended for union members, organizations, friends, and allies. That doesn&#8217;t mean all of your content has to be about unions, of course.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There are also a few instances already with a specific <a href=\"https:\/\/umap.openstreetmap.fr\/en\/map\/mastodon-near-me-global-mastodon-server-list-by-co_828094#7\/53.380\/0.906\">geographical focus<\/a>.\u00a0 If anyone sets one up for Nottingham, let me know :-)<\/p>\n<p>You can still follow people from other instances!\u00a0 The main difference you&#8217;d probably notice from picking a themed one is the kind of discussion that&#8217;s easy to discover in your &#8220;Local timeline&#8221;, and who can easily discover <em>you<\/em> in <em>their<\/em> &#8220;Local timeline&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The theme can also be a clue to the kind of territory your mods will be good at dealing with, e.g. you&#8217;d expect the mods of an LGBT-themed instance to have a clue about LGBT issues.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t already got a recommendation from people you know, or your friends are on sites which are currently &#8220;full up&#8221;, a great way to find possible contenders is via <a href=\"https:\/\/fedi.garden\/\">Fedi Garden<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fediverse, running on Mastodon software &amp; other software, is like a sort of grass-roots, often-friendlier Twitter-alikey.\u00a0 It&#8217;s becoming increasingly popular as people leave Twitter.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re thinking of getting an account there, and wondering where to set it up, you might be interested in the things I thought about when I did the same. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2023\/03\/choosing-an-instance-for-your-fediverse-mastodon-account\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Choosing an instance for your Fediverse\/Mastodon account&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-techie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":103,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}