- Elon Muskiz bought Twitter and the storm weather on the well-known social network: many barbers read that the alternative is Mastodon and that it may be time to migrate to it. In fact, for a few years Mastodon.eus and Mastodon.Jalgi.eus the Basque services are underway, and there are many friends in them, some of them also on Twitter. If Mastodon is going to be an alternative, a continuation or a parallel thing, the future will say, but here are some practical points for the Basque Chiola who is thinking about migration or parallel use.
Basic mechanics
The tueste and use of Mastodon are mechanically similar but with nuances:
- A bird can contain up to 280 characters. A Mastodon toot (appears at two in Euskara), up to 500 characters.
- Instead of Like or heart, Mastodon becomes Aldekoa and there is a version similar to RT: It's called a boost.
- In Mastodon there is no figure of Txio Quoted or Quote Tweet.
- In Mastodon there is no metric if there is no count for your tubes. You'll know how much boost each of you has had, but reading those of others you won't have that information.
- Lock, silencing and correct messages, expressed with similar mechanics.
Local and global
Mastodon is not a web or a centralized service like Twitter. It is a federation (part of what is called fedibertso), and in that network there are two branches in Basque: Mastodon.eus and Mastodon.Jalgi.eus. But besides joining one of the Basque branches, you can also participate in the global interview and, of course, in the other Basque Mastodon. There are different instances of common interest created by interests or policies. In other words, there are instances that bring together journalists, communities of writer readers or plastic arts and photography.
This local/global setting makes your Mastodon account not have a main timeline, as you can have on Twitter, but three timelines. At least in the web interface, as the mobile application is smaller in this respect.
There are three main menu options, especially those that define these three timelines.
- The closest thing to Twitter is the beginning: the timeline of the people you decide to follow. There will be other Basques Mastodon.eus, but also people you have found in other federated services and you have decided to follow.
- The venue is all they have posted in Mastodon.eus.
- Mastodon is the content of the accounts that the Basques follow on other servers.
It is an important fact, these three possibilities appear chronologically ordered. I mean, that was the original Twitter setup, and now you can also choose, but the bird service also has an ordination "in order of importance."
Search
The search window offers several options, but not just text. #EuskaraldiaYou can search in Mastodon or #Elondim and give local result (in one case) and some federated mastodnes others.
Find people to continue
In Mastodon to follow people, you can enter the local Basque environment (in one or the other) and follow people there. But people from other places? In the usual Twitter you can follow people from all over the world... In theory this is what can be done in Mastodon, it is about knowing the names of @users of people and the concrete networks of @mastodon.
For example, in this Twitter screenshot we see that two people mention their new Mastodon accounts.
We've tried the search with the name @ashtonpittman@mastodon.social and found it. OK. We can continue.
With the other user @jenniferreitman@journo.host on the first street.
Can it be that the new Mastodon service Journo.host, organized among English-speaking journalists, is not yet federated of the Mastodon.eus in which we have made the search in Basque? Anyway, with that user name you can remake a URL https://journa.host/@jenniferreitman and then yes, looking for that, it seems we can add it.
Rules and protection against abuse
Each instance of Mastodon has its own rules and the Basques too. Here are the rules of each other. In general, both are designed to express themselves in Basque and are allowed to write in another language, unless one acts in that way. One of them expressly mentions the protection of the opposite position. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia and their defence are prohibited in both Basque services. And because each service has its managers and managers, the one who transgresses the rules is eliminated and ended.
On the question of trans rights, an additional note, not only are the Basque authorities opposed to transphobia, but also Mastodon.social the central ones, the official policy of the creator of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko (as noted in this article in Argia).
Mastodon is a free software in which whoever knows technology can create a forum on your server according to its rules. Nazi mastodons? there are. But they are not federated or interconnected with Basque services.
To start with
It is best to try: