Mastodon, the Movie

Some movies start with totally separate plotlines, whose relationship is eventually revealed. It’s called “hyperlink cinema.”

We have a short-lived opportunity to change social media forever. Here’s why, in hyperlink cinema style.

Plotline 1

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms grow into major social influences. These centralized platforms encounter (and cause) a variety of problems, mostly related to the challenges of moderating global communities.

Over time, many individuals come to believe that the future of social media must be decentralized.¹ These include prominent social media professionals (including all the founders of Twitter); social media researchers and analysts; and more.

But none of these players can advance the vision of decentralization. With users concentrated on the few major platforms, there’s no way for a new project to gain scale.

Plotline 2

Six years ago, a German university student creates Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source microblogging platform similar to Twitter. He graduates and continues developing it, scraping together enough in donations to make it a full-time job. The student’s name is Eugen Rochko.

In 2021, Rochko formalizes Mastodon as a non-profit organization. Its 2021 budget is about €100,000; he sets his salary at €28,800.

By fall 2022, Mastodon has 250,000 active users; barely a droplet compared to Twitter’s 240 million, and Facebook’s 2 billion.

Plotline 3

(This one you probably know already.)

In October 2022, Elon Musk buys Twitter. He quickly takes a series of business and moderation steps that make the platform inhospitable to several important stakeholder groups:

1. Journalists
2. The broad left-of-center coalition (elected officials, professionals, and activists)
3. Software developers

Suddenly, a novel situation arises:

• Many users become motivated to find a new microblogging home.
• Many developers who build microblog tools become motivated to apply their talents elsewhere.

The plotlines converge

It’s pretty clear how these threads come together.

Mastodon becomes globally known to anyone interested in social media. It’s not immediately ready for primetime, with confusing onboarding and user flows. Even creating an account can be challenging. Nonetheless it rapidly sextuples, from 250k active users to 1.5 million (down from a peak of 2.5 million).

The rest is ours to make

People interested in the future of social media know this moment is pregnant with opportunity. Large foundations and prominent technologists are figuring out how they can help. Developers are already jumping in; in the last few weeks, at least four separate clients for Mastodon have launched, as well as other experimental projects. Mastodon, which for six years was an obscure passion project, is about to have adequate resources for the first time ever. As Mastodon ascends, it will bring along the “fediverse” (federated universe) of other open-source, interoperable platforms.

The plan from here is straightforward:

1. Smooth out the rough edges and make Mastodon a modern, intuitive consumer experience.
2. That will unleash more growth.
3. A virtuous cycle will emerge, with more users creating more content and better experiences, and attracting even more developers to make the fediverse even better, and so on.

It will take all of us to make it happen. Here’s how you can help:

1. Send great people to joinmastodon.org/careers.
2. Let people know to check out Mastodon later this year, even if they tried it already.
3. Donate to or invest in fediverse projects and servers.
4. Donate at joinmastodon.org/sponsors.
5. Build great new products for the fediverse. (If you’re helping to build the fediverse, apply for funding here.)

Footnotes

1. They realize this for several reasons, including:

• The impossibility of applying one set of rules to everyone on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• The realization that our social networks are too important to be entrusted to commercial actors. After Elon Musk’s shambolic purchase of Twitter, Mike Masnick rightly asks, “Why Would Anyone Use Another Centralized Social Media Service After This?”
• The “enshittification” of social platforms, in which they gradually extract first from their users, then their business customers, until they cross a tipping point and people leave.