Taking a Look at Mastodon
I joined a Mastodon server yesterday (&quot;mastodon.online&quot;) and I immediately started searching the &#x27;fediverse&#x27; for people I already follow on Twitter, seeing if I could build myself a little feed to read.  The first few people I searched all had multiple accounts, across multiple servers.  So immediately this is a problem:<p>- Which one is the one I should follow?  I guess I&#x27;ll click on each one and see which one they&#x27;re actually using to post.<p>- How do I stop someone from impersonating me by creating an account with my same username, on a different server?<p>- What happens when the unpaid&#x2F;volunteer mods on a server get overwhelmed with the content moderation task?  What happens when they just start censoring stuff they disagree with (exactly what the wingnuts claim Twitter&#x2F;FB have been doing to conservatives)?<p>I don&#x27;t get this whole &quot;a protocol is the answer&quot; thing either.  Sounds like the same kind of nebulous thinking we hear when people start pontificating about blockchain.<p>Twitter was (is?) successful because the model makes sense. A for-profit company whose motivation to fairly and competently moderate content and verify users is driven by their need to be a safe space for the advertisers upon whose money they rely.