Having a conversation on Blue Sky about the frustration people over there have with Mastodon.
A lot of it involves capricious defederation, where server admins, usually of smaller instances, will sever people from their friends by defederating from a server over the presence of a few trolls. And, the instability of building a network in such conditions.
One person mentioned radio silence from an admin after being unable to log in.
@alexwild in my experience, since November 2022 larger servers are more unstable since so many servers grew explosively beyond admins' ability to moderate; we've seen several quite large ones go down relatively suddenly. Yours, as one of the flagships, is no doubt around for the long term. However, large servers are almost all poorly moderated (including yours) and are often blocked or muted by servers with more strict rules.
Large servers run by, shall I say, ill-equipped people are also prone to accidental or impulsive defederation—e.g. Kolektiva accidentally defederating from mastodon.social during the latter's spam wave because they didn't understand how the feature worked, or the mstdn.social admin unexpectedly defederating mastodon.art over the latter's anti-Threads policy. However, the consequences are far more disruptive, and less easy to excuse, with large servers. (1/2)
@alexwild For these reasons I still strongly recommend small servers over large ones—but also that prospective members should first ask the admin about their moderation philosophy and how they deal with growth.
I've written more about what people should think about when choosing a server here: https://nevillepark.ca/2023/07/01/how-to-choose-a-mastodon-fediverse-server/
Of course, most people are used to corporate social media and want an impersonal and professionally run service they can sign up for immediately and seamlessly reach anyone in the world; and they don't want to have to think about how it's funded, whether they can trust the people who run it, or what their ethics and personality are. In that case I would say the fediverse is simply not a good fit for what they want. (2/2)
@JosephTLapp @alexwild Note: flipping.rocks uses the Hometown fork, which allows for local-only posting as well. (Same privacy rules apply, the posts just don't get sent out to other servers.)
A proposed? upcoming? Mastodon change will combine Local and Federated timelines, which is useful for huge servers but undesirable for small or more topic-focused ones. IIRC the official app doesn't even show you a local timeline?
In general over the years Mastodon development has skewed towards the needs of huge servers and away from smaller and less visible ones, a thorn in many of our sides. However, there are more lightweight platforms being developed like GoToSocial and Takahe which may prove more suitable for small communities.
Alex Wild
neville park
Joe Lapp, Bug Poet