Boley Blog

Boley Blog: Welcome to the Mastodonverse

The Boley Law Library has had an active account on Twitter as @lawlib for nearly 14 years. We've had a good run there, but with the future of Twitter rather up in the air these days your law librarians are exploring Mastodon.

[Update: You can now find us on Mastodon at https://glammr.us/@lawlib.] For those likewise intrigued by the Mastodonverse, here is a quick intro to Mastodon and how to get started.

Mastodon is a social network site — or rather, it is a network of Mastodon social networking sites all talking to each other. Some describe it as Twitter crossed with email. Others like good old blogs mixed with a feed reader similar to the dear departed Google Reader. But mostly it feels like a more open, conversational Twitter.

One big difference is the lack of an algorithmic feed. This makes it trickier to find people to follow, but there are plenty of tips below to navigate through. This model avoids the incentivizing of viral posts for the sake of vitality. No paid ads. Nowhere near the number of marketing posts. And way, way less piling on. Mastodon now even allows you to edit posts. It's like a reverse-universe Twitter, but in a good way.

There are some excellent discussions of the what and why of Mastodon that go well beyond what this post has room to cover. I highly recommend Jeff Jarvis' On Joining Mastodon, fellow law librarian David Whelen's I've Seen the Mastodon, Clive Thompson on How Mastodon Is Designed to Be "Antiviral," and this excellent EFF guide to Mastodon privacy and security settings. 

Getting started

1. To App or Not to App
You may be wondering if you need an app. You do not. Just go to your instance's website in any browser, whether on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. You can run Mastodon just fine on the web. 

If on the other hand you prefer using an app, there are many excellent Mastodon apps available and more on the way. You can find the official Mastodon app on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Prefer more of a Twitter-like look and feel? I have an iPhone and have enjoyed Metatext and Mastoot and Toot! Toot! has a fairly friendly onboarding experience, too. I am currently using the Beta version of Mammoth, from the developer of the Twitter third-party app Aviary. Android users have many options as well, and I've heard good things about the free all-platforms app, Hyperspace. Here are links to those and many more Mastodon apps. (Photo by Battenhall on Unsplash)

2. Pick an Instance (aka a server or community)
Where to start? The most confusing part of using Mastodon is the first step: picking an "instance" which is their name for a host server. Remember how Mastodon is really a federated network of Mastodon servers? To get started on Mastodon you have to sign up with one. If it helps, think of an instance as a community. It doesn't really matter much which one you begin with; you can always change anytime. Plus, you can follow anyone from any instance.

It can be daunting picking an instance. A good tip is to find one that has folks with similar interests. It'll help you find your starter community. Some people begin with one of the very large instances and then discover another later that hosts their friends or shares their worldview. As those large instances like mastodon.social have been overwhelmed with new users, I recommend at this point that you instead start on one with a personal or professional interest. 

Here's a great list of academic Mastodon servers with all sorts of options, including one for Law Professors run by Professor Jeremy Sheff of St. John's U. Law School. Alternatively, there is Law Builders by attorney and Free Law Project Board member Ansel Halliburton. It is for those "building or teaching in law, civic tech, govtech, or related fields."

Or perhaps you want to focus elsewhere. Here's a humanities-focused list of Mastodon servers, including the popular zirk.us arts and humanities instance. If you wish, browse the full range of available instances from the Mastodon home site. Remember, you can always move. Me? I ended up at glammr.us, a space for those "interested in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, Memory work and Records." My people!

Once you pick an instance just click on the Create Account button and you're off and running.

3. Who to follow
Unlike Twitter, which eventually learned to provide new users with recommended accounts to follow, in Mastodon you have to find them yourself. It isn't difficult to do so. One good strategy is to take your time getting the lay of the land by viewing the Local timeline with posts from people on your server, then just follow interesting people as you browse. You can also do the same on the Federated timeline, which pulls in posts from users on other servers, but fair warning, the Federated feed can be a lot.

Already using Twitter? Find people you follow on Twitter who are now on Mastodon. They'll often list their Mastodon address in their Twitter profile. I recommend this fantastic tool, Movetodon.org. Movetodon will look at your Twitter follows, search for Mastodon addresses in their profiles, and then help you follow any or all of them in Mastodon with just one click. It's a miracle. Prefer the manual approach? You can also search across Mastodon by name and hashtag.

Finally, you can find lists of Mastodon users you may wish to follow. Check out this Google Sheet, #LawFedi: Lawyers and Legal Academics on Mastodon. Or this one, providing curated lists of academics by discipline. There are more of these types of lists being developed every day.

There are many other guides to Mastodon. Need to go deep? Please enjoy this majestic An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon by Noëlle Anthony.

Is Mastodon the next Twitter?

Who knows/probably not. Mastodon is its own thing at this point. And that's been kind of nice. The conversations I've been finding on it are different, more engaging than much of what is found on Twitter. Part of that is due to the lack of the algorithmic feed. Some due to the smaller number of participants. (Photo by Mylon Ollila on Unsplash)

However, I think much of it is because of how Mastodon has a very different incentive structure and many built-in limiters. The lack of universal text search is frustrating, but it limits trolls. There are no quote tweets, but perhaps that choice inspires more actual responses and conversations and less snark. This last design decision may change for some very good reasons. There are server rules that have, so far, effectively put a real check on the types of hateful speech that are so prevalent on other platforms. There are real questions on how well such dispersed, volunteer moderation can scale. But if Reddit and Wikipedia count as 'model' examples, there's hope this can work.

And hey, Mastodon can also be fun, even in the legal field. Check out LOL SCOTUS, the bot that finds the notorious laughter lines in U.S. Supreme Court oral argument transcripts. See, fun! Mastodon is a new-ish world with a delightful name. Take a chance and see if this thus far rather friendly, chatty, and welcoming social media network is the one for you. I'll see you in the Mastodonverse.