I see a lot of people emphasizing to new users that "mastodon is not twitter", in a way that I suspect alienates those users while also being misleading.

Mastodon and mastodon-like fediverse nodes (ex., pleroma, gnu social, etc) look and act almost exactly like twitter, very intentionally.

To the degree there are technical differences, they are largely either scale-related (the fediverse was federated since long before mastodon was a twinkle in gargron's eye, because centralized social media is only possible with stupid amounts of no-strings-attached VC money) or downstream from culture.

Almost every technical decision that differs from twitter here is downstream from culture, and almost every technical decision that isn't different from twitter is the result of the culture not yet having enough discourse to change it.

What is the culture?

The culture on the fediverse is formed from ex twitter users -- people who left twitter in various waves at various stages. These waves are mostly people who felt like they didn't fit in (or who felt actually unsafe) on twitter.

The first wave predates mastodon by years, and was open-source / free-software / security / privacy / civil liberties people. Basically, the kind of guy who tries to get everybody he knows to use tor & kali linux. These folks felt like the proprietary nature of centralized social media software was an ethical problem, and that the centralization & ad-based monetization was a security risk.

Later waves include: furries, LGBTQ people, and non-white people, all of whom faced systematic harassment on twitter; anarchists and communists, who don't like the profit motive in general and were happy to move as soon as they were aware that something else was available; retrocomputing / slow-computing people, who felt that centralized social media produced an unhealthy and environmentally unsound relationship between people in social media; sociology-of-UX & software-utopianism people, who felt that centralized & profit-driven social media produced unhealthy relationships between the people it mediates.

These categories overlap, and the more of these categories you fall into, the more likely you've actually been on the fediverse for a while. (For instance, I'm an anarchistic free-software guy with sympathies for slow-computing & software-utopianism, so all of the concerns other than systematic harassment have affected me personally, & I've got a lot of friends who have gotten systematic harassment too, so I've been on the fediverse for a good half-decade.)

Anyway, despite the fact that the fediverse is populated mostly by people with strongly-felt objections to the way things work on twitter, these cultural concerns actually only rarely result in visible technical changes -- and even then, they tend to be subtle. Emphasizing the technical differences is probably not helpful for onboarding new users, because new users are unlikely to encounter them on their own for weeks or months! To a new user, mastodon looks like twitter with a different color scheme.

It is more useful, in my opinion, to emphasize to new users that the fediverse, in general, cares about the users that twitter was happy to subject to harassment & other forms of violation long before a Musk regime was on the radar. Then, when a user encounters a technical difference, they are primed to understand it as downstream from culture: they know that it's somebody's attempt to fix a social problem that was rampant on twitter, and every former twitter user is aware of the kinds of social problems that were rampant there.

If you are new here,

I've compiled this list of posts I wrote with tips for newcomers. I hope these can be helpful to you! Welcome! 🐘✨

Profile Page 👤
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109316634420493334

Mastodon Features   ​
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109287715784844066

Content Warnings ⚠️
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109282181601490676

Alt-Text 📝
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109323425237412179

Filters 🚫
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109323462169819778

Lists 🗂
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109265634017886918

Culture  ​
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109299435630063038

Fediverse  ​
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109293952488692993

Questions ❓
https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/109305965618704182

More Resources 👇

‣ Browse this hashtag to see more of my tips: #TinyMastodonTip

‣ Browse this hashtag to see more Mastodon and Fediverse tips: #FediTips

‣ Follow this great account for regular Mastodon tips in your timeline: @FediTips ✨

I’ve read about fears some Mastodon folks are experiencing with the influx of Twitter people. I’m doing my best to hold space for that experience, be respectful of unfamiliar norms, and encourage others accordingly.

I want also to hold space for the mourning of people coming from Twitter and ask that we receive the same grace. Contrary to its reputation here, Twitter has been a community of support for me and many of my followers.

Change always involves loss 💜

here's another free tip for all you lovely #TwitterMigration people:

you don't have to censor words here to evade search - there is no plain text search on Mastodon :) in fact, you actually shouldn't censor those words because then they won't be filtered out for all the people who set up filters. But you don't have to worry about random people jumping in your mentions because they name searched themselves - this just isn't possible on the fediverse :)

it's cool like that 

Cool fact about Mastodon:

Not only can you block trolls, you can block entire servers and instances where trolls hang out.

Anyone can do this—not just moderators!