The stuff you’ve already heard a million times

Mastodon is a decentralized social network, meaning anyone can download it and run their own instance. Each instance can federate with each other, so it still feels like one massive social network. The benefit is that there’s no single point of failure, but that’s only relative to the entire Fediverse. People recommend joining the smallest instances or running your own because it’s better for decentralization - and it is. If you’re on a server with 15 other people and it gets wiped off the face of the internet for whatever reason, only you and 14 other people are affected. If Twitter goes down, everyone with an account is affected.

Does decentralization really matter?

In the perfect scenario, no instance would ever get as huge as Mastodon.social because everyone’s spread out across tens of thousands of different, independently run servers. The world is not perfect though, so there are plenty huge servers with tens of thousands of users like mastodon.social, mas.to, and mstdn.social. It’s far better off than Twitter, but a lot of eggs are still in the same few baskets.

I think decentralization is great for the community but it’s not always so great for the user. In the few years I’ve been hanging out there, I can’t even keep track of how many times I’ve seen an instance shut down, leaving its users to export their data and find another place to set up camp. Then a few months later, that one shuts down too. It’s cool you can export your followers/following list, etc. but you can’t take your posts with you unless you’re on some one off custom version. But even then it doesn’t work too great in my experience.

Personally, I don’t mind nuking everything and starting from scratch though; I do it a lot. I like a hard reset every once in a while. But for a lot of people, I don’t think they get just how fragile small servers can be. In today’s chronically online world, our social media profile is a timeline of our lives. I think that’s why a lot of people are still all in on Facebook; they have photos and memories that have been hosted there for 15+ years. It’s hard to just pack up and walk away from that, even if you do think Zuck is a weird manchild of a subterranean lizard person.

If you’re on something centralized like that and it permanently goes offline without notice, you’re shit outta luck. If you’re on a Mastodon server with 50 people and it goes down without notice, you’re equally fucked.

The health of the entire Fediverse would still be perfectly in tact though. You can start over elsewhere and it’ll still feel exactly the same because it’s literally the same platform.

The key thing is to to donate to your instance when you can and make sure they’re able to cover operating costs without going broke. It’s a thankless job running something like Mastodon. You have none of the resources of a massive corporation but people expect it to run 24/7 with no hiccups, bugs or downtime. Server owners are providing a ton of value and asking for nothing in return, aside from a tip jar and a kind message asking to donate, but only if you can afford to. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out in the long run and the server has to shut down. That’s just a fact of life; you can’t keep running a free service if it’s going to put you out on the streets.

What’s my point?

I dunno. I was just thinking about how many people pushed me to get off of Mas.to and find a smaller server for the sake of decentralization, but it’s not really that big of a deal imo. Join whatever server you like. Unless you’re a hardcore advocate for decentralization itself, you’re going to be fine. Probably more so on one of those huge commercial servers. Especially if you’re using it as a complete Twitter replacement. I’d argue Bluesky is the all around better choice if that’s your poison, but that’s another story entirely.

Finding a community of people you vibe with is much more important than worrying about decentralization. It’s cool if you can find a good, sturdy smaller instance. But it’s not the end of the world if you opt for one of those big guys or something in between, either.

Closing statement: it’s not the size of the tool, it’s how you use it 🤪