Expanding on the Reasons People Reject Mastodon

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I feel like I’ve explored this topic before, but it keeps coming up on my timeline. Specifically, on the timeline of my Bluesky alt account that I’ve got setup for the off-chance, or the just-in-case situation, where I can no longer exist on my personal Mastodon instance (I love my instance so much, that losing it would be heartbreaking to me, and I don’t know if I would want to move to a new instance after all this time). What keeps coming up on the timeline? People expressing, or better yet, complaining about what they feel is wrong with Mastodon. So, let’s explore a little more.

I will be honest: with Mastodon, what put me off with a lot of UNSAID expectations. It felt like you cannot just write something like here: - What server you’re on matters (each one has own rules) - Adding filters to posts were (sometimes) important (eg if writing about politics or Twitter)

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— Gergely Orosz (@gergely.pragmaticengineer.com) November 21, 2024 at 5:18 AM

I bring this person’s Bluesky post here, not because they’re some kind of arbiter of Bluesky vs. Mastodon as a topic, but just because this is a sentiment I see a lot.

For whatever reason, a lot of people just want to input a username, a password, and then sign-in and start posting. At risk of sounding inflammatory, or cynical, people don’t want to think.

But it seems to go beyond that. Choosing a server, joining a community, expressing your interests, and sharing who you really are, should be something fun, right? But throughout the attached thread, this is apparently seen as as barrier. It’s seen as … gatekeeping?

And then the issue with “filters” for posts, or, what they’re called on Mastodon, content warnings. I’ve seen so many people express discontent with having to use them, when to use them, why they’re expected to. A lot of people just want to post, “Here’s my dissertation on the current political climate, and why you should panic,” and expect that no one would be like, “Hey, could you maybe not do this without some kind of warning?” Because, and I have to start again with things that sound like uncharitable takes, they don’t want to consider other people when they say and do things?

That sure is a sentiment of your average “influencer,” or people who wish they were.

What is an influencer? Someone who posts with an inflated sense of self, who assumes that people are fans, followers are their adoring masses, that you should come to them, and accept what they have to say, and what they do, because they’re special, and you are a peasant.

What I really think about all of this, is that this is a sickness that was generated by Twitter. It was curated, crafted, and instilled into the masses over years, and years of use of the platform. The algorithm was made to incentivize selfishness, and venom, and so, therefore, that’s how people began to act, that’s how they started to use social media.

Twitter was bad well before it was ever bought out by a megalomaniac.

And now we have … a clone of it?

Okay, so Bluesky is good. There are a lot of cool features, and hey! You can sorta, by proxy, connect it to Mastodon!

But because it’s billed as like this … exact Twitter clone, that’s how people are treating it. They’re bringing that behavior, they’re bringing that inflated ego syndrome, they’re bringing the venom, and they’re continuing it.

And when they’re faced with the idea of joining communities, and being social, and being thoughtful of others, it’s … it’s seen as a bad thing.

In the beginning, in parenthesis, I mentioned how I wouldn’t want to lose my instance, and if I did, it would be too heartbreaking for me to move, and find a new place to be on the fediverse. And it’s true. I’ve been on Mastodon since 2017, and I’ve been in many places. My instance is my home, and I think if I lost it, I would probably concede myself to my Bluesky account.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t at least give Mastodon a chance. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t look to learn, and find ways to be social online, again. But, for me, the way I exist on the fediverse, is with my own blood, sweat, and tears.

But I do think decentralized islands are probably the future?

And maybe I’m wrong, maybe I would stick around on the fediverse, even if I lost mkultra.monster. Who knows, I don’t know. The future is a variable I don’t know.

What I do know is …

I’m not sure Bluesky will make it. I’m not sure Bluesky will make it, because they’re backed by big money, by people you absolutely should not trust, who will eventually need to raise their own money, and that’s exactly how Twitter became an X. Take my words with a grain of salt. But there’s a reason that the newest generation of teenagers becoming adults are bad at making social connections. That, all people, are connecting less. And it’s not just because society has become more frantic, more driven by greed.

There are billions of people online, and hundreds of millions of people across Threads, X, Bluesky, and Mastodon, and there are many more social media apps that I haven’t even mentioned here. But the one constant that I’ve noticed on most of them, is that genuine connection is hard to come by. Even on Mastodon, for as socially connected and more thoughtful that it is. I, myself, struggle to connect with people. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do.

Sometimes I hit people with a “like” and then I keep on posting. But sometimes I reach out, and I try to be conscious of what I say, and what I do, and that’s largely because of the time I’ve spent on the fediverse.

Is that really a bad thing? Is that gatekeeping? Is that … user-hostile?