[throwaway290]

What I dislike about Mastodon is how people talk about "moving to Mastodon".

Unlike Twitter, FB etc. you don't just "move to Mastodon"... you move to some ActivityPub server. Which one? They don't want you to know I guess?

Edit: thanks for the pointers!

[ASalazarMX]

But they're specifically moving to Mastodon (infosec.exchange and defcon.social), which is not the same as moving to Lemmy, KBin, or PixelFed. For example, Lemmy federates with KBin, but not with Mastodon. Kbin federates both with Lemmy and Mastodon. Also, Mastodon has a Twitter-like UX, while Lemmy/Kbin have a Reddit-like UX. PixelFed has a Flickr-like UX.

It makes a difference, and insisting on calling them ActivityPub or Fediverse servers has strong GNU/Linux vibes, which we should probably avoid too.

[throwaway290]

You are making the same mistake. There is no Mastodon as a place or protocol. There's ActivityPub and a bunch of server/client software. Mastodon is one of those

[yosito]

> Lemmy federates with KBin, but not with Mastodon

I follow several Lemmy users on Mastodon.

[themoonisachees]

Lemmy federates with Mastodon. You can @ a community to post in it.

[entropyie]

For those whom are curious, a lot of infosec people are now on infosec.exchange .

[mayd]

For those who are curious ...

[rsynnott]

I mean... strictly speaking yes, but for most practical purposes it hardly matters, surely?

[lapcat]

> They don't want you to know.

This sounds overly dramatic and conspiratorial.

[throwaway290]

Why conspiratorial?

People are allowed to be private and not want others to follow them by not saying exactly where they moved. I am allowed to voice my frustration about that.

Segregating communities is the trend now (post web 2.0 social platforms), I don't think that is over dramatizing things.

[lapcat]

Don't forget that Twitter was actively censoring Mastodon links and preventing users from putting them in their Twitter profiles:

https://mastodon.social/@danluu/109521316258129814

[throwaway290]

I'm more about tech people casually dropping they moved to Mastodon, us techies kinda get Mastodon is not a single place like Twitter so the only explanation for not saying "I moved from Twitter to such or such community" is not wanting people to know.

[rsynnott]

> us techies kinda get Mastodon is not a single place like Twitter so the only explanation for not saying "I moved from Twitter to such or such community" is not wanting people to know.

Eh? There are _some_ Mastodon instances which are to some a community distinct from Mastodon writ large, but that's not most of them. I moved from Twitter initially to mastodon.online (one of the giant ones, not really a community at all), then to mastodon.ie (the generic Ireland one; marginally a community, but only very marginally), and reserve the right to move further if appropriate. But I don't see why anyone would care about the distinction between them, really.

Generally, I would assume it's less not wanting people to know, and more that it's irrelevant detail. I think this is maybe a common point of confusion over Mastodon; for most people, for most purposes, the instance _simply does not matter_. There are some generally very small instances which are highly focused on specific communities (and may even require that user content revolves largely around those communities) but those are rare; I'd expect under 1% of the user ship. For most people Mastodon is the community, not their instance.

If someone says "I used to do business mostly by post and fax, but now do it mostly by email" you wouldn't go "ah, but are you using gmail or hotmail? It must be a conspiracy because you don't want to tell us!" They don't name the email provider because it is _irrelevant_.

[lapcat]

> the only explanation for not saying "I moved from Twitter to such or such community" is not wanting people to know.

The only explanation for something that people are, in your own words, "casually dropping"? Your comment practically contradicts itself.

[yellow_lead]

Defcon.social works great for this particular subject.