Dr. Brandy SchillaceI’ve heard folks say ‘server/instance doesn’t matter’ —but it must, or we would not have them. I’d just like a basic break down of what they do for us, really. How to use them.
chris@bschillace well, to an extent it doesn’t matter any more than it matters who your email provider is. Whether you are with your ISP, Google, Yahoo, iCloud - will get through. However some email providers are more reliable than others. And some have a bad reputation for spam, so if you are sending mail, it may get rejected. That’s the ‘Federated feed’ Unlike e-mail, there is also the separate local feed. Some servers have clusters of common interest on them …
@bschillace … which gives you immediate accesss to knitters or rock climbers or coders. If you are a knitter, knitter.mastodon might well be worth joining 😃
Jeff Haluska@bschillace For the why....
The reason it matters is that it shares the cost across more people. It allows for either geographic performance improvement or like minded conversations to flow more efficiently.
Right now people are actually adding more instances which increase the capacity of the Mastodon ecosystem.
JCS3@bschillace Your instance is like a club that you belong to. Some clubs accept everyone, some are selective, some talk about everything, some focus on a particular topic. Your local feed is what everyone who is a member of that club is saying. Your home feed is everything that the people you follow are saying. Your federated feed is, your home feed, plus your local, plus all club members home feeds (assuming these are public posts)
nebuchi_25 
@JCS3 @bschillace there are many things one could potentially add to this conclusive description of what an instance is, but i think that the most important one is - the admins of the instance ban people who do not adhere to the instance rules, defederate bad instances (eg neonazis, terfs etc), and keep the place nice and tidy for all. so in choosing an instance you also choose an admin.
**RDS (shawphd on Twitter)**@bschillace I think it’s more accurate to say it doesn’t matter *initially* as you can switch later (your followers will be automatically updated).
Choice of server affects two main things: the moderation rules you and your server-mates post under, and whose public posts show up in your Local feed without you having to follow them.
llewelly@bschillace
reasons it can matter:
Those who run the instance decide moderation policies are, and whether or not they are enforced.
Who runs an instance also affects how the maintenance is funded, and how reliable it is.
Dr Lindsey Fitzharris@bschillace I think the key is not to think of Mastodon as a replacement of Twitter. It might look and feel a bit like Twitter, but it's a different ecosystem. My understanding is that the servers prevent it from becoming centralized (and therefore susceptible to being bought/controlled like other platforms). I'm still learning though!
Mike McHargue@DrLindseyFitzharris @bschillace You are absolutely correct.
Annavirrpanna@mike @DrLindseyFitzharris @bschillace
Also the moderation may vary a little bit, every instance will have different rules and may “defederate” other servers if their users misbehave or post icky content. So you want to pick a server with rules that works for you. I’m not sure I used the lingo correctly 😅
@DrLindseyFitzharris @bschillace because the fediverse is made up of many instances, some mastodon based and other not, it will forever remain the property of the people. also, it cannot be overtaken by neo-nazis. when this almost happened, nearly all instances in the fediverse defederated from the large neo-nazi instance. this is what is known as #isolateGab.
@bschillace They matter in terms of creating the functionality of the platform. They don't matter in that it is quite easy to move from one to another.
Andrew C. Eagar, PhD@bschillace Servers affect what content appears on your "local" timeline. They're also independently maintained from one another, so users joining one server only increase the usage strain on that server & not others. You can still interact with and see content from others on other servers, just like emailing someone on Yahoo from a Gmail account!
Spencer@bschillace I wrote a bit about this over here yesterday.
Choosing your server matters in these ways:
Choosing your server doesn't matter in these ways:
Hope this helps a bit!
Choosing your server matters in these ways:
- Your server is your "gateway" to the wider network. Your server's admin team will make decisions about what other servers to block, and that will limit your ability to interact with that content (or for it to sully your feed). If you're a dog person, and the admins at cat.town have decided they will block any server that posts dog pictures, you probably don't want to register there. On the flip side, if you really like a browsing experience relatively free of harassment, you might find a server whose admins are very proactive about blocking and defederating from nasty instances.
- Following from the above, your server will have a culture to it, as a result of the people who use it and the decisions moderators make. You will likely have a more comfortable experience if you find a server whose culture matches what you're looking for. This culture will be reflected in the "Local" timeline, which shows posts from other people on your server. By way of example, the (real) instance dolphin.town will only allow posts that consist of the letter E. Because dolphins. You probably wouldn't want that if you're not interested in practicing your Dolphin or being around other people doing the same.
- Your choice of server will be reflected in your handle. If you don't want to be associated with a silly server name like toots.biz, you probably shouldn't register an account there.
- Choosing a server also involves choosing who you entrust with your data and the stability of your site. I'm a big proponent of very small, local-only communities built on actual real-world connection—that's why I set up my instance over here. I want the people who use my site to know who is handling and storing their data, and feel like they can actually come to me if they have issues with how the site is run. I wouldn't, for instance, want to sign up for TotallyNotADataHarvestingScheme.xyz, because that sounds sketchy, and I wouldn't trust them to have my best interests at heart! This is a level of trust and security we don't get on large, closed-garden social networks like Twitter or Facebook, so I think many of us aren't used to thinking about it, but I think it's also one of the most important. What sort of relationship do you have with the person running your social network?
Choosing your server doesn't matter in these ways:
- You can follow and interact with anyone across the Fediverse, regardless of what server they're registered on, so long as your server admins have not defederated from that server.
- It is possible to move an account from one server to the next. It's not seamless, and I don't personally know what gets left behind, but you are not permanently locked in to whatever server you choose.
Hope this helps a bit!