We’ve started to use Mastodon (in addition to Twitter and LinkedIn) to share quick news with you: new blog posts, contributions to Free Software projects, photos at events, etc.
Did you know Mastodon? I’ll like Twitter, but better, decentralized and really free (as in Free Software). I discovered it by attending one of the conferences we sponsor (Capitole du Libre in Toulouse, France) and by following the efforts of Framasoft to provide decentralized Internet services.
There is a very nice article introducing Mastodon and its strengths vs Twitter: Mastodon Is Better than Twitter: Elevator Pitch.
Here is a summary of Mastodon’s advantages:
- Being Free Software and not biased by the need to maximize revenue for its investors
- It’s decentralized and therefore controlled by its users. You are free to join an instance that matches your interests and sensibility, but of course you can follow anyone on any other instance. It’s also easy to move to another instance or even host your own one
- There are no Retweets but Boosts. Retweets allow to share a post with your own comments to all your followers. This creates flame wars in the best interest of Twitter. Twitter needs its users to spend as much time as possible viewing the content they host (and therefore their promoted content at the same time). Instead, Mastodon only allows to “boost” the visibility of someone else’s post, without allow you to add your own comments. Mastodon has no interest in making you stay as long as possible by creating flame wars. It just lets you focus on the content your are interested in.
In a nutshell, using Mastodon contributes to a better world in which users are in control of their data, interests and time.
What about joining the Mastodon network and give it a try ! Go to https://joinmastodon.org, choose your perfect community (your Mastodon instance… we are on https://fosstodon.org), and follow us if you wish on https://fosstodon.org/@bootlin.
We hope that you will like the experience.
