Join Mastodon, an Alternative to X and Facebook

To keep control over your data and reject intrusive advertising, it is essential to avoid networks that spy on you such as Facebook, X/Twitter, TikTok, etc. Free (libre)¹ alternatives exist! Introducing Mastodon.

Free and Community-Based Software

Mastodon is free software. This means that it guarantees everyone the right to use it, but also to access its source code to copy, study, or modify it. This allows anyone to create their own instance (server) without depending on a central company. Decentralization is at the heart of Mastodon, which means that no single company controls the platform.

Unlike platforms such as Facebook or X/Twitter, Mastodon is not funded by advertising revenue. There is no targeted advertising or mass collection of personal data for resale. Mastodon is mainly funded by donations and voluntary contributions, similar to Wikipedia. These donations help cover the costs of software development. Similarly, each Mastodon instance must bear the costs of server hosting and maintenance, and some may charge subscription fees. However, many instances are entirely free and operate through volunteer work or donations.

This is the main challenge of Mastodon's economic model: its dependence on donations and voluntary contributions. At the same time, this is what allows it to maintain independence and decentralization. Developers and administrators must rely on the generosity of the community to ensure the project's sustainability. This requires them to be financially transparent: Mastodon regularly publishes reports, available on its blog, showing how donations are used. This allows contributors to see exactly where their money is going and to ensure that funds are being used responsibly.

Mastodon is therefore an independent project that evolves thanks to contributions from the community and according to users' needs.

Simple and Effective

Mastodon works much like other social networks. You follow accounts that match your interests. You can see current trends, the most commented or most shared posts. You can find posts by topic using hashtags. You can choose the level of publication: accessible to everyone, to a restricted group, or private messages.

Mastodon supports audio, photo, and video posts. It also allows you to create polls. You can add descriptions to visual content to improve accessibility. It is possible to add warnings for potentially sensitive content and hide this content by default... in short, Mastodon offers everything you would expect from a social network. And does away with what you don't want! In particular: there is no algorithmic manipulation like on commercial networks, which use complex algorithms to determine what you see and manipulate the flow of information without your knowledge. On Mastodon, posts are displayed in chronological order; you see messages in the order they are published.

Mastodon is also a much more peaceful network. That doesn't mean that everyone is friends or that there are never any arguments. But Mastodon rightly attracts people who can no longer tolerate the hatred that is usually present on social networks, and who are looking for quality discussions and diversity of opinion. Also, the absence of algorithms helps to reduce the tendency to lock users into a distorted perception of reality and thus to polarize exchanges. Finally, the decentralized structure makes it more difficult to spread misinformation on a large scale. The instances set their own rules, which allows for more appropriate and responsive moderation to combat false information (fake news). Centralized networks have demonstrated their limitations in effectively managing misinformation, possibly because of their size and complexity, but also because they are sometimes the source of it themselves (as in the case of Elon Musk with X/Twitter and Donald Trump with Truth Social).

How to Sign Up?

The main difficulty in getting started with Mastodon comes from decentralization, an unusual concept because it is absent from commercial platforms. To sign up for the network, you must first choose a server, also known as an instance. Mastodon is not a single website like Facebook or Twitter. It is a network of independent but interconnected instances. With an account on one server, you can follow anyone else on the network, regardless of where their account is hosted.

So how do you choose where to sign up? It is advisable to choose an instance based on the default language used, which does not prevent you from posting in all languages, and based on the topics that interest you. Instances can bring together communities around specific interests. You can find a list of popular servers and filter them by criteria here. It is also important to ensure that the instance's moderation policy is in line with your values. This is usually presented on the registration page.

If, despite our advice, you're still feeling overwhelmed by the choice and can't take the plunge, don't stress—just sign up at mastodon.social. This is the original and largest server, accessible to everyone and managed by the non-profit association Mastodon gGmbH. If you don't like it, you can easily move your profile to another server at any time without losing any followers. And for total control, you can set up your own server. But that's where it gets technical...

Conclusion

In summary, Mastodon offers a more privacy-friendly, transparent, and community-oriented alternative to commercial social networks. It allows us to regain control of our data and participate in a more peaceful and decentralized social experience. We hope to see you there soon: follow our Librist.org account!

Other free (libre) platforms may also be of interest to you. Have you heard of Pixelfed?