@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic But I don't understand why Mastodon is so popular.
In order to understand it, you have to go back to Mastodon's origins in 2016.

Mastodon was brand-new. It was somehow discovered by German press that a German lad almost fresh out of school had developed a "Twitter killer". Searing hot story in Germany which quickly spread beyond Germany.

There was also Pleroma, also from Germany, but Pleroma got nothing because it had made the mistake to position itself as an alternative Web UI for GNU social rather than direct stand-alone competition against Twitter.

There was also diaspora*, a Facebook alternative, but it was nothing but a distant memory of a crowdfunding campaign in summer 2010, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica story, which raised $320,000 when $12,000 were the goal. But diaspora* itself wasn't released with a bang. Some six years later, it was still a public alpha, it was fairly lack-lustre, and the entire development team had to be replaced on the way. Most people had entirely forgotten about it, even tech journalists.

There were also GNU social (formerly StatusNet), Friendica and Hubzilla, but like Pleroma, the general public had never heard of them.

And so it seemed like this boy from Jena had made something that had never been done before, also because he had a ready-to-run software product and not a plan and a crowdfunding campaign.

Fast-forward to 2017. Certain fringe groups were chased off of Twitter: furries, otaku, LGBTQIA+. The only halfway Twitter-like place that at least some of them had heard of was Mastodon. So that was where they invited each other. Within no time, #awoo was one of the hottest hashtags on Mastodon.

It was especially then that Mastodon grew faster than anything else in the Fediverse.

Fast-forward to early 2022. Elon Musk had announced that he might buy Twitter. The first big Twitter migration wave was kicked off. And everyone who fled from Twitter into the Fediverse landed on Mastodon. Why? Here are some reasons.

• There were many more Mastodon users who'd invite people to Mastodon than there were Pleroma users who'd invite people to Pleroma, and especially in the western world, there were far more than there were Misskey users who'd invite people to Misskey. Not to mention their respective forks or stuff that wasn't made to be a Twitter alternative.
• For simplicity reasons, Twitter escapees were never given the choice between Fediverse projects. Instead, they weren't even guided to the project websites but to certain instances, mostly mastodon.social. Not only because more choice would have overwhelmed the Twitter escapees more, but also because you can only tweet so much in 280 characters.
• Precious few Mastodon users even knew back then that there was more to the Fediverse than Mastodon, much less what there was. Thus, nobody on Mastodon invited anyone from Twitter to Calckey or so.
• It actually seemed like Pleroma, Akkoma and the westernised Forkeys slept through the migration wave because there weren't actually masses of people guided from Twitter to one of these.
• Neither of them really had that one big official lighthouse instance that could withstand a massive migration wave of hundreds of thousands or even millions of users. I guess their users were rather cautious. All this in spite of especially Pleroma and Akkoma requiring much fewer server resources than Mastodon. Only Misskey had and still has a lighthouse instance that a) can hold loads of users and b) with a domain that makes it look like this lighthouse instance is Misskey.

And so the Fediverse ended up with millions upon millions of people who initially thought that Mastodon, or even the Fediverse itself, was only mastodon.social. Or mstdn.social or mas.to if their inviters were too lazy to type on their phone screens. But most of the time, it was mastodon.social.

A typical Fediverse invite tweet looked like this back then:
join mastodon its twitter without musk https://mastodon.social

No link to joinmastodon.org. No mention of instances, much less other instances. And no mention of the rest of the Fediverse.

Well, and now that Mastodon makes for 70% of the Fediverse, and at least every other Mastodon user still doesn't know about the existence of a Fediverse outside of Mastodon, there are still more people trying to invite 𝕏 users to Mastodon than people trying to invite 𝕏 users to anything else in the Fediverse combined.

Tech media and mass media don't help either. Mastodon had a huge boom, but everything else in the Fediverse didn't. Thus, Mastodon was noticed by tech media and mass media, and everything else in the Fediverse wasn't. Thus, tech media and mass media only wrote about Mastodon, but hardly about the Fediverse itself and never at all about Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey/Firefish, Sharkey, Iceshrimp etc. because they never even noticed that any of these exist. Thus, the general public read about Mastodon, but hardly about the Fediverse and not at all about anything else in the Fediverse. Thus, people only know Mastodon.

And now you have next to nobody on Pleroma trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Pleroma.

You have next to nobody on Akkoma trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Akkoma.

You have next to nobody on Iceshrimp trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Iceshrimp.

You have next to nobody on Sharkey trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Sharkey.

But you have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Mastodon.

You have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from Facebook to Mastodon because they've never even heard about the existence of Friendica, much less Hubzilla, (streams) or Socialhome.

You have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from all kinds of commercial silos to Mastodon because Mastodon is all they've ever heard of, and besides, they try to race Bluesky in terms of user numbers.

When it comes to microblogging, we now have:

• Bluesky: the next Twitter. Also with easy onboarding because it's centralised. (Bluesky nerds: "Ackchually..." @Christine Lemmer-Webber: "ACKCHUALLY...")
• Threads: Meta Platforms = Facebook = Zuckerberg = evil!1!!
• Nostr: Either you've never heard of it, or it's a playground for cryptobros by cryptobros.
• Mastodon: The only non-commercial alternative to the Birdcage known to mankind, but WAYYYYYY too complicated because you have to choose an instance! (Not like both joinmastodon.org and the official app railroad you to mastodon.social. Not like the official Bluesky app doesn't let you pick a PDS to join.)
• Pleroma: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
• Akkoma: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
• Misskey: only known in Japan.
• Firefish: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
• Iceshrimp: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
• Sharkey: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that. Apparently, not even the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
• Catodon: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
• Mitra: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
• And so forth...

In short: Mastodon is only so popular because nobody knows anything else. Its only advantage over the rest of the Fediverse is that many more people know it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon