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<p>I imagine many of you are already aware of this one, but for those who aren't:</p>
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<p><span>"Mastodon is a </span><em>free, open-source</em><span> social network. A </span><em>decentralized </em><span>alternative to commercial platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company monopolizing your communication. Pick a server that you trust — whichever you choose, you can interact with everyone else. Anyone can run their own Mastodon instance and participate in the </span><em>social network </em><span>seamlessly."</span></p>
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<p>taken from the most populous Mastodon instance: <a href="https://mastodon.social/about">https://mastodon.social/</a> (currently not accepting accounts due to popularity!), there are many servers/instances to choose from, some listed in the link on that page: <a href="https://instances.mastodon.xyz/">https://instances.mastodon.xyz/</a> but there are certainly many more.</p>
<p>It is Twitter like social media platform but with numerous servers/instances (effectively groups) that you can sign up to, but they also federate to some or all other instances, depending on the specific instance.</p>
<p>My immediate verdict is that I quite like it, and it's certainly more manageable than trying to keep up with my current Twitter feed! On the other hand, if you want your identity/nick, you will only have it on the server/s you sign up on, so it will be a bit tricky if you are a well known person as there is no authenticated identity system in place, so either you need to grab your nick on all servers or accept that others may use the same nick/id as you elsewhere on the network.</p>
<p>This seems a good candidate for setting up a social media platform for any group that could use their own public (or private?) online social network, perhaps HacktionLab, which could compliment the existing mail list and (rather quiet!) irc channel, (hey wasn't Diaspora supposed to be just that already??!) If anyone has server space and Docker running, should be pretty quick and trivial to spin up: <a href="https://hub.docker.com/r/gargron/mastodon/">https://hub.docker.com/r/gargron/mastodon/</a> (from main Mastodon developer) we could test it and build a new expanded online community! I can help but have no server currently.</p>
<p>Anyway, check it out if of interest, how to choose which instance is still a grey area, as is filtering what appears in your local/global feeds. The Android client seems fine and you are not limited to 140 char yay! (there is also option to add a content button to hide your post (or 'toot' as they are called) which is handy for those TL:DR posts! You can find me as @acesabe currently on <a href="https://mastodon.rocks">https://mastodon.rocks</a> instance as well as some others eg: <a href="https://anticapitalist.party">https://anticapitalist.party</a>. Do share any related infos, thoughts and your own @name so we can network.</p>
<p>Re us getting up to Barncamp this year, alas, contrary to rumours, it is pretty unlikely we will be able to make it, but hope can bring the family to the next one, really missing all that hands on tech and cider on top of the hill!</p>
<p>A</p>
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