Mastodon ain’t Twitter

We mentioned earlier not being able to search for individuals by name. This is a deliberate measure designed to reduce harassment, protect privacy and generally make the Mastodon fediverse a more wholesome place than the birdsite ( oh,lookatyoualldownwiththe

lingo–Ed). In fact, a Mastodon instance is only searchable through the use of hashtags, so if you want your toot to be found you’ll need to, in the immortal words of UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, understand the necessary hashtags. Mastodon communities may be more or less tolerant of certain kinds of speech, but instances hosting (potentially) offensive content can be blocked or silenced by other instances.

Other key differences to Twitter include a 500-character limit on toots, so that discussions can be more meaningful, and much more flexibility about who can see one’s toots: they can be visible to specific users, all followers, hidden from public timelines or public. Furthermore, there’s a distinctly tusks up attitude towards advertising. It’s not that corporate presences are banned outright, but the emphasis is very much on each account having a single, real person behind it (even bots have their masters). Excepting a Mastodon administrator modifying the codebase (which would only affect their instance), there’s no opportunity for paid advertising or data mining with Mastodon – it’s designed to be about human communication, not making money.