I've just got to say how happy I am with the Mastodon community, especially all the science/space people that I'm following. This place is the clear winner after the social media meltdown, despite its outstanding issues and missing features.
What makes me even more excited is that it's open and unmonetized, so it's completely immune to shareholder demands or the whim of a billionaire.
Don't worry if your friends aren't here yet, we're your new friends.
do note that while it's not subject to whims of "a billionaire", it's now subject to the whims of a few hundred neurodivergent server administrators which means some or all of your data and connections can still vanish in thin air with no warning, for any touchy reason, and frequently does, unless you're hosting your own, which comes with its own problems...
there's masto.host and also digitalocean offers an "almost one-click" setup, but yeah. in my eyes it's a dilemma, while theoretically individuals are better than billionaire shareholders, in practice i've seen dozens of those individuals go out of commission permanently, taking thousands to hundreds of thousands of users with them, because behind the scenes mastodon is a really rough place to manage. and while self hosting protects you against that somewhat, your reach becomes minimal
@fraser yknow we also do have precedent of corporate takeover for federated services, it's... email!
it used to be that most people had their own email address in any random place, very often their ISP provided one. nowadays you're pretty much stuck with google or microsoft, and a few others who managed to carve out a slice through great effort. Problem is, if you self host mail, if you don't get blessed, nobody will accept your mail even if you fulfill all the dozen requirements.
Fraser Cain
evolbug