Mastodon isn’t truly ‘decentralized’ and won’t be the next big thing

People have it all wrong, and it’s making things worse

There are certain tech pundits out there lauding Mastodon as the decentralized savior of all the former Twitter users now adrift in the oceans of the Interwebs. Thing is… it isn’t decentralized. Like… at all. It’s time to stop using the wrong words for things in the world. People like Leo Laporte, Chief TWiT and The Tech Guy and Jeff Jarvis, two people I follow closely and enjoy reading and hearing, have it all wrong.

The argument is that being “decentralized”, no single entity can come along and run the whole train into the side of a mountain like Musk is doing with Twitter. In that one very specific and tunnel-vision perspective, fine… it’s not centralized. But from a user perspective, it’s really not decentralized in a way that makes the rest of the argument(s) even worth having. IMO. $.02. YMMV, all the caveats apply.

Instead, Mastodon is really a distributed micro-centralization model. And that’s a small but very important distinction. It highlights why I don’t think it’s all that much better. I’ll illustrate further; hang in here with me.

In the left side of graphic at the top, let’s assume I’m a flat-Earth nut job… er… believer at the red node on the diagram. Let’s say there’s a Flat Earth Society discussion group at the blue node. I want to connect with them through [pick your social media platform]. In a centralized model, if that platform says I can no longer be part of the group, or the discussion group can no longer be part of the group, that’s it. We’re done. I have no other way to connect to them. In theory. I know, I know… the internet is really big. Stay with me.

In the supposedly-decentralized model on the right side, I could be a member of some instance or server or hub represented by the green dot and the discussion group might be connected through a hub at the pink dot. If Pinky or Greenie decide that either the discussion group or I have been deemed unworthy to reside on their instances, now there are, at least, twice as many entities who can ban me or the discussion group, again making it impossible for me to connect.

There are options, of course.

The discussion group (or I) could spin up their own server, but that requires certain resources and expenditures in resources or money, and that may prevent them coming back online despite the “democratization of access to information” so many of the supposedly-decentralized supporters claim is the greatest benefit of decentralization.

The discussion group (or I) could simply move to a new instance or server, or they may need to bounce around a number of other servers until they find a home. The risk there is becoming simply “unreliable” in the eyes of participants because they might be cut off and not available while looking for a new server. There might be lost data between instances.

In each case, the “free and open” internet really isn’t. In this extreme and contrived example, there are still gate keepers who can (and will) determine what’s best for the community. The difference now is that each of these communities is smaller, perhaps more focused (which is probably good), but exists in the realm of a gate with its own keeper.

Gosh, call me a cynic but each of these communities is likely present at the whims of a single person, or perhaps a very small group of very like-minded people, and are more like fiefdoms than any democratized free flow of information could ever be.

And all the discussions I’ve heard by and about people running their own Mastodon instances are pretty draconian. “Oh, I ban or block a lot of people” and “There are some servers I just won’t allow to connect”, etc. And no, I don’t believe it to be “just a few radicals” saying such things. The aforementioned Leo Laporte talks about it all the time. And I get it; he’s got his community to look after, and he wants to keep a certain feeling and flavor to his community. I get it.

I really do.

But with every gate keeper cherry picking what he feels is best for his one small community, now you have fiefdoms and not a democratized society, and that’s why, IMO, “decentralized” systems like this — which have existed in the minority for a very long time — ultimately won’t become “the” thing and are destined to always be displaced by corporate systems with centralized policy management, money, and commercialized access (read as: ads). To me, it feels more like the old wild West now with these systems popping up than it ever did before.

This is further compounded by the fact that Mastodon is “hard to use” according to… well… pretty much EVERY non-techie I’ve tried to introduce it to, and the general public is full of people who just don’t care because they want everyone they talk to in one place. Non-techies (and non-public figures and non-journalists) don’t bop from social network to social network. Most muggles are Insta users or FB users or TikTok users, and don’t move around much.