this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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Mastodon.social is not a good way to join Mastodon. If you’re already on it, you might want to move your account to a different Mastodon server. | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the F (fedi.tips)
submitted 11 hours ago by Crazycookie@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] gamesieve@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

I agree with the general sentiment that this article doesn't make its case well - but there certainly is a valid case about the risk of any single instance getting too big.

I think that as long as Mastodon GmbH are still the good guys, a more effective strategy than trying to get individual users to change their behaviour, might be to get Mastodon GmbH themselves to see and agree that mastodon.social being this big in not in the interest of the overall long-term health of the network - and to build in automatic size limiting, where any instance with more than x% of users will close signups until they drop well below that threshold.

[–] unabart@sh.itjust.works 48 points 11 hours ago

Join whatever instance you want, follow whoever you want, and most importantly, don’t let the Mastodon HOA push you around. They lurk in all corners of the Fediverse trying to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, which defeats the while idea.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 35 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think the author likes mastodon dot social...

I couldn't get through all of this blog post because it's repeating the same point 500 times. I get the theoretical threat scenario they are painting; what's missing are the receipts. Is moderation on that instance actually getting worse? Have we talked with admins on the record how they don't dare defederate from that alleged wretched hive of scum and villainy? And two other angles are missing: (1) a name brand instance might be a good starting point on the fediverse. It's still better than Xwitter. And (2) people are not donating enough to their instances, who are then run on dedication and held together by duct tape. The fear of having one's instance shut down because the admin is out of money and duct tape makes people gravitate towards the bigger instances.

I'm not opposed to recommending people to find other, smaller instances - that is a good idea. It's just this blog post reads more like a hit piece.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 11 hours ago

If a fediverse server has too many users for the mods to keep up with, they really should close the registration.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Mastodon.social is so much larger than other servers, that other servers have become afraid of defederating it.

Sounds like a way for users to protect themselves against random admins who might defederate a whole server on a whim.

The article's author made an argument against the point he's making.

[–] ren@reddthat.com 4 points 8 hours ago

It's the same kind of extortion racket that these powermods (they do it for free, lol) like to engage in in Reddit and Lemmy too: Play ball, or get banned/defederates for engaging with no-no communities.

And the worst part about it is they genuinely think they do it for a greater good instead of their petty power fantasies and power struggles ("we own this corner of the internet.")

[–] sundray@lemmus.org 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Mm, I've tried leaving mastodon.social, and quickly found that a lot of the people I follow and my followers form an elaborate web of blocks/de-federations that meant I would inevitably lose contact with many people. They're all good people, but I don't think they'd change their own instances just for my sake. I could join like, three different instances just to keep in touch, but if forced to choose at this point, I might just give up on Mastodon altogether.

[–] mschae@discuss.mschae23.de 1 points 7 hours ago

I feel like having to do moderation on the instance level is just not a good idea, because it just leads to scenarios like this. Unless an instance was just set up to send spam, in which case blocking it site-wide is obviously the best thing to do, you're always going to cut off actual people who post from there.

At least on Lemmy, moderation can also be done on the community level, which actually have a topic they can enforce.

[–] PerfectDark@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I'm on mastodon.social and I have a solid amount of followers, I'm active on there every single day, not once has it felt like I need to move from it

https://mastodon.social/@flwwhtrbt

I tried really hard to read through whatever point this blog was trying to make but it really needed some editing

[–] vogi@piefed.social 3 points 8 hours ago

I also do not like this kind of sentiment. Sure in a perfect world it would be slightly better if we all are distributed equally on different servers. But the biggest advantage of the Fediverse still stands, even if we all are on a central instance. If mastodon.social ever looses its shit for whatever reason, its still possible to move without loosing connections.

I think ridiculing new folks about "rules" like this make the Fediverse less inviting and counter productive. And to be honest the experience on .social is far better than on smaller instances IF you are coming from twitter and are looking for something similar. When I see new people on .social im happy that they even joined Fedi.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 3 points 9 hours ago

Yeah, I find that the point is rarely well made and it's often because the whole argument is a bit confused. People want to present it as being easier than it is.

Open registrations on the fediverse is a problem in general. Trolls abuse it to make accounts specifically to harass specific users. Those not being harassed will not notice this - before the "fetch all replies" feature was introduced they wouldn't even see the replies. And because it seems so much better than other platforms unless you're actively being targeted, you'll have minority women or whatever raising the problem and a bunch of white men will respond that they have no idea what they're talking about and that there is no problem and that they should just block the trolls. Blocking the trolls is just not efficient if they keep popping up all over the place.

One way to avoid this as a server admin is to defederate instances with open registrations that are being used in this way. But Mastodon.social is too big for this strategy to really be viable.

Of course, open registrations is also key to people bothering signing up in the first place. People are not used to resistance, and they don't want to write a letter of motivation to sign up for social media. So the issue is not easily solved. Mastodon is working on better moderation tools. Hopefully they'll manage to address it that way.

[–] Paragone@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

https://mastodon.rodeo/mastodon-server-directory/

allows you to see servers by focus

so does this; https://joinmastodon.org/servers

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