|
Mastodon really has the exact same feel as twitter. The difference being that CAP theorem produces really weird conversational effects. If you look at the myriad Mastodon domains, operating as single-instance hosted websites, on whatever infrastructure they deploy to, very, very few sites have more than 1,000 users, and any of the under 1,000 club are filled with mostly geeky accounts, and a fanout of a handful of lurker accounts per each identifiable personality. The one really, really huge Mastodon node is basically filled with sex workers (and their johns, presumably), and is operated out of Australia. That being said, consider what CAP theorem does to conversations as federated servers pop in and out of existence as they go offline. It's going to be link rot to all hell. You can figure that the prostitution Mastodon instance is probably going to experience some pressure, and eventually collapse. And not only that, any users on that trunk of the federation will disappear. So what happens to the followers, and the followed? Where do the conversations go? Does it matter? It's mostly the promotional efforts of ladies (and not-so-much-ladies), hawking their fare. Anywho, right now, suffice to say, Mastodon is in a weird place. The first people driven out of Twitter, were using Twitter as a bunker, after Backpage was dismantled. Then Twitter cracked down on those sorts of accounts, and now they're pioneering the largest Mastodon community in operation, because there are few open options. So, Mastodon is likely going to become associated with that sort of Craigslist vibe, but in the form of a Web 2.0, single page web app, right now. And where that will take things in the future is anybody's game, but we see what happens to these underground bunkers over and over again. Mastodon will unfold a little bit differently though, because of it's Twitter-style publicity angle. |