Yesterday Gargron helped me get his take on the project, so that I can write a mission statement. But, I would also love to hear your take, so I can combine the two into our collective statement.
This is me trying to be more transparent with the process.
Feel free to help me answer these questions:
1. What does Mastodon mean to you?
2. Where do you want to see the project go?
3. How do you talk about Mastodon with your friends?
1. It's a democratized social media protocol with oodles of potential. Algorithmic networks inhibit social change - they weaken connections between people by drowning out public interest messages in a sea of like-bait posts and ads. Currently, political organizations, nonprofits, and artists are unable to cheaply and effectively reach their followers - change that, and lots more can change. And, it's resilient! Any mistakes we make now still build the future network.
2. I'm not sure if the project needs an overall direction! Besides a continued focus on user experience, which has been very impressive so far. I think users and instance communities can all create their own meanings of what Mastodon means to them.
3. I’m staying away from the word “instance”. Lately I’ve been using the term “node” instead of “instance” and describing Mastodon as the network. Or I’ll say “torontomusic.cloud is a Mastodon network, and it’s seamlessly connected to every other Mastodon network.” I only use the word “federation” if I know I’m dealing with a fellow scifi-er.
Other things? I emphasize its amazing privacy/content warning features, lack of ads and algorithms, and its anti-centralization, profit-inhibiting architecture. I also try to sell people on a vision of what’s possible in a non-algorithmic open-source network, but that’s often tougher.
Thanks for your hard work on this project! I'm terribly excited about it and have much optimism :)
maloki
Digits
BD