Call us MuyComputer, call us MC… Call us what you want, but call us, what would the song say, if this were a song. But is not. It is a warning to navigators, especially for those who are users of the thriving social network Mastodonin which we recently launched and, of course, in which we encourage everyone who is interested to follow us.
As everyone knows, Mastodon is a kind of free clone of Twitter with its own peculiarities. The two that define it are, firstly, that it is based on open source software and secondly, its nature as a decentralized or, rather, federated platform. This essentially means that its operation as a service does not depend on a single provider, so it is common for Mastodon users to use different servers.
For example, the server in which we have created the MC account is the main one:
👉 mastodon.social/@muycomputer
However, it does not matter if you have signed up for another, because it is most likely interconnected: hence the federated.
Why jump to Mastodon now? We are following the path of our MuyLinux colleagues, and it seems like a good time to do it, although if Mastodon is at a peak, it is precisely because of all the turbulence Twitter is going through after being acquired by Elon Musk. The story has a lot of crumb and we have been covering it for a long time, but that would be the summary.
Neither the Twitter problems came with Elon Musk, nor can it be said that Elon Musk is not trying to solve them… generating others, perhaps minor, but very striking, due to the peculiar style of the character. Hence the rout from Twitter to Mastodon. In this regard, if it complies with what has been said this coming week, the Twitter algorithm will be released under an open source license.
In short, with its past and present problems, Twitter is and will continue to be the reference, but due to all the fuss that has arisen, an alternative like Mastodon has come to the fore, which is always good news because the alternatives are positive, especially if like Mastodon they bet on more transparent development models.
But make no mistake either: Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter in technical terms, but not in everything else… at least for the moment. That is why it does not hurt to support it even in a subtle way, that is, without leaving Twitter, which is where most people continue to be. If things change later, we’ll see.
In any case, whether the code is more or less free, is governed by a federated or centralized model, behind each platform there are people who end up imposing their point of view. In that sense, Twitter and Mastodon are pretty much the same. The idea of Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, was to create a network based on open source and decentralized, but he did not get to do it.
Be that as it may, you find us on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram… and now also on Mastodon. Although if you ask me, RSS and email subscription are the most attractive methods, depending on whether you want everything at once or prefer only the best to be selected for you.
