When Elon Musk bought Twitter, I was a little bit optimistic but mostly indifferent. He did pretty well at Tesla and Space X so that's where my optimism came from. Best case scenario, he would make our collective Twitter experience better. The worst he could do is leave Twitter alone as it is and not make it any better or worse, right? That’s where we were dead wrong. In the beginning, he monetized the verification system, selling it as a feature of Twitter Blue subscription at $8 a month. Fine, he needed to recoup some of that $44 billion loan that he borrowed. He learned soon enough that letting just about anyone buy the verified blue checkmark without any verification is a recipe for disaster when about a dozen people bought the subscription and changed their Twitter username to impersonate brands and public figures causing some companies to lose billions in their stock price.
In early January, Twitter quietly killed the API connection to many popular third party clients like Tweetbot, Fenix and Twitterific (An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other). Like I said earlier, the official Twitter app sucks, big time. The timeline’s not chronological, it follows some stupid algorithm and it’s full of ads. Third-party apps like Tweetbot is the opposite of that. The timeline is chronological and it remembers my last reading position and syncs between all my Apple devices. This is particularly important because I read every single tweet from the 233 people that I follow. Also Tweetbot lets me hide ads, mute users, keywords and hashtags and a slew of other interesting features.
Third-party apps were crucial in Twitter’s development. They spur innovation, creativity and tremendous growth for the platform. As a matter of fact app developer, Sean Heber created the first Twitter app, Twitterific way before Twitter bought another Twitter client - Twittie and made it as their first official app. The word “tweet” was first coined by Sean himself and he developed the “pull to refresh” feature which was adopted by Twitter and also many-many other apps outside of Twitter. To say that I was upset when Elon killed the API would be an understatement. I was enraged. If the idiot wanted the ads revenue in third-party apps, he could have easily enforced the API to show ads. Instead he just killed third-party apps altogether and forced every user to use his crappy app.
So what does one do? Rage-quit Twitter and social media altogether? The thought did occur to me but I’m still too weak and somewhat addicted to it. Instead, I started to slowly move towards another social media platform - Mastodon. What does an extinct proboscidean got to do with social media? Nobody knows why Eugen Rochko, the creator, chose to name this software Mastodon after the extinct elephant-like mammal, but you cannot speak about Mastodon without touching the Fediverse and ActivityPub protocol. The Fediverse (Federated universe) is a collection of thousands of independent social media servers that talk to each other seamlessly. They communicate with each other using a common technical standard called ActivityPub. One of the most popular types of Fediverse server out there is Mastodon, a Twitter-like social network but unlike Twitter it’s decentralized.
Imagine the emailing system. You have many-many companies providing free and paid email services out there, from the more popular ones like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo to personal private email addresses with their own domain (like khairul@sambalnyet.com). These many disparate email providers all communicate using a few different standards to send and receive emails such as POP3/IMAP and SMTP. But these standards enable us to send emails from let say Gmail to Yahoo and vice versa or to any other email providers in the world. The same applies to Mastodon. The first Mastodon server (or instance) is mastodon.social created by Eugen in 2016. People who register with mastodon.social can interact with other users on mastodon.social as well as people on other servers who use the same Mastodon server type for example mstdn.social or mastodon.sg or kopiti.am, just to name a few. There are thousands of servers to choose from out there, some you can sign up immediately, some you need to apply to be a member. Alternatively, you can host your own Mastodon server using your own domain and connect to the Fediverse. Let's say I’ve got the domain afif.com and I created my own Mastodon server and configured my server to connect to the Fediverse using the ActivityPub protocol. I can create any usernames such as @afif@afif.com or @abdul@afif.com and I can interact with anybody from other Mastodon servers either directly or with my posts (similar to tweets) appearing in the Federated timeline. If I want to, I can let anybody register to my Mastodon server, create a username and they can use @username@afif.com as their Mastodon username. Creating a Mastodon server requires some basic technical knowledge but it is relatively cheap and some of that server hosting costs from as low as USD8-10 a month.
And Mastodon is just one type of server in the Fediverse. There’s also Pixelfed, an Instagram like social network, PeerTube (YouTube), MicroBlog and WriteFreely (blogs) and Friendica (Facebook) just to name a few.. They all use the ActivityPub protocol and they are all decentralized servers unlike Twitter which is one company/server who controls everything (think a megalomaniac sociopath like Elon Musk). This is important because no one can buy and control everything on the platform or enforce arbitrary rules according to their mood or whim. Every server sets their own rules, they can block or allow only certain people on their servers. If a user would like to move to a different server for any reason, they could just sign up on a different server and move their current username to that new server in the Mastodon settings page. All your posts, favorites, boosts (retweet), followers and followings will be moved to that server in a short time. You don’t like one server because it promotes hate speech and homophobia? Move to another server. You actually like hate speech but a lot of servers like to block you? Create your own server!
After Elon Musk became a dick and killed Twitter’s API connection, many Twitter app developers who previously depended on the platform for their livelihood suddenly found themselves without a major source of income. The wise ones quickly turned their attention to Mastodon and in a short time, released some amazing Mastodon apps such as Ivory (formerly of Tweetbot), Ice Cubes, Woolly, Mammoth, Toots, Tusky and many more. As I said earlier, I loved Tweetbot very much and was outraged when Twitter killed third-party clients. With Ivory, it brought over the best features of Tweetbot plus many more since the Mastodon API has very little limitations unlike the Twitter one.
The only downside of Mastodon, at least for now, is that most of the people I follow are still on the bird app. The few people that actually signed up for Mastodon rarely toots (tweet) there so I had to start fresh and follow total strangers but with something interesting to post. That’s 88 people in total at the time of writing so I can finish my entire timeline within 20 minutes. I understand not everyone has the same kind of feeling or appreciation for quality third-party apps or they’re not a
So, did I pique your interest enough to try out Mastodon and join the Federation? There’s a couple of good guides about Mastodon out there, starting from the official Mastodon page and then FediTips which is where I got most of my reference for this blog post. You can pick a server to sign up from here and FediGarden provides a small curated list of servers to help new users decide before joining Mastodon. Mastodon.social used to be a good server to start with but it is now a bit crowded with over 950,000 users on it and had recently become targets of DDOS attack (here’s looking at your Space Karen). But if you still would like to sign up on Mastodon.social, you can use my private link here. Come join the Federation, it’s fun and less toxic than Twitter. Don’t forget to follow me at @afif@mastodon.social!
The dreaded Show more Tweets button. I read every single tweet on my timeline and when I tap this Show more Tweets button it will usually skip a few dozen tweets to the top which is infuriating. I had to tap on hold on the button and pray that it doesn’t skip forward. I don’t have this issue on Tweetbot.
The beautiful Ivory user interface, from the makers of Tweetbot. Comes with custom themes, app icons, customizable menu buttons, iCloud sync for reading position, cute sound effects, mute filters and most importantly, ad-free (there are no ads or algorithms on Mastodon unless you’re following a brand). Ivory for iOS subscription costs RM9.90 per month or RM69.90 a year. You need to pay for quality apps because these developers need to make a living. That said, Ice Cubes for is another great Mastodon for iOS/Mac app that is free but accepts donations through the app.
There are multiple timelines available the Mastodon interface. There’s the Home timeline where you see posts from accounts you follow directly. They can be from the same server (mastodon.social) or a totally different server. The Local timeline shows every post from all accounts on the same server/instance, in this example from mastodon.social. The Federated timeline shows all posts from many-many servers in the Fediverse, meaning servers that utilize the ActivityPub protocol. Bear in mind though, the Federated timeline only shows posts from servers that your server users have interacted with recently. It’s impossible to show every post from every server on the Fediverse because there are too many and the technical demand will crash the app or user interface.
The Ice Cubes app shows the instance (server) information. You can see how many users have signed up on this particular server, the admin contact info, how many posts have been posted and the rules enforced by the server creator/admins.
Pixelfed is an Instagram-like Fediverse server. Technically you can login to your Pixelfed account on a Mastodon client like Ivory here and view your local, Home and Federated timelines. The only catch though, Pixelfed for example only allows posting of photos plus text on the server and you will not be able to post texts only (without any photos) in your Pixelfed account. The same applies to Micro.blog which is a blogging server but supports the Markdown syntax so you can see hyperlinked and formatted texts in your timeline if you follow any users from the server. The default character limit for every post is 400 but some servers allow up to 1,000 or more. It all depends on the server admin but you will need to click read more to read the rest of the post.
There are no central verification or “verified blue checkmarks” for application or purchase on Mastodon. If you see any profiles with the blue verified icon, it is just a custom emoji that is supported on that server. Mastodon.social itself doesn’t support the verified emoji but it does support dozens of other emojis listed here. You can add a custom emoji to your own profile by adding :customemojiname next to your display name. In addition, you can verify yourself as the owner of the account by putting a simple link back to your Mastodon profile on a website that you own. For example, I just paste the link back above on any page on my Blogger blog and it will show the green verified icon on my user profile/bio.
The beautiful Ivory user interface, from the makers of Tweetbot. Comes with custom themes, app icons, customizable menu buttons, iCloud sync for reading position, cute sound effects, mute filters and most importantly, ad-free (there are no ads or algorithms on Mastodon unless you’re following a brand). Ivory for iOS subscription costs RM9.90 per month or RM69.90 a year. You need to pay for quality apps because these developers need to make a living. That said, Ice Cubes for is another great Mastodon for iOS/Mac app that is free but accepts donations through the app.
There are multiple timelines available the Mastodon interface. There’s the Home timeline where you see posts from accounts you follow directly. They can be from the same server (mastodon.social) or a totally different server. The Local timeline shows every post from all accounts on the same server/instance, in this example from mastodon.social. The Federated timeline shows all posts from many-many servers in the Fediverse, meaning servers that utilize the ActivityPub protocol. Bear in mind though, the Federated timeline only shows posts from servers that your server users have interacted with recently. It’s impossible to show every post from every server on the Fediverse because there are too many and the technical demand will crash the app or user interface.
The Ice Cubes app shows the instance (server) information. You can see how many users have signed up on this particular server, the admin contact info, how many posts have been posted and the rules enforced by the server creator/admins.
Pixelfed is an Instagram-like Fediverse server. Technically you can login to your Pixelfed account on a Mastodon client like Ivory here and view your local, Home and Federated timelines. The only catch though, Pixelfed for example only allows posting of photos plus text on the server and you will not be able to post texts only (without any photos) in your Pixelfed account. The same applies to Micro.blog which is a blogging server but supports the Markdown syntax so you can see hyperlinked and formatted texts in your timeline if you follow any users from the server. The default character limit for every post is 400 but some servers allow up to 1,000 or more. It all depends on the server admin but you will need to click read more to read the rest of the post.
There are no central verification or “verified blue checkmarks” for application or purchase on Mastodon. If you see any profiles with the blue verified icon, it is just a custom emoji that is supported on that server. Mastodon.social itself doesn’t support the verified emoji but it does support dozens of other emojis listed here. You can add a custom emoji to your own profile by adding :customemojiname next to your display name. In addition, you can verify yourself as the owner of the account by putting a simple link back to your Mastodon profile on a website that you own. For example, I just paste the link back above on any page on my Blogger blog and it will show the green verified icon on my user profile/bio.
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