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Mastodon is a problem only if you want it to be a platform

I just found online what is, in my opinion, another proof that certain concerns about the “Twitter replacement” called Mastodon are solid… but the solutions that get the most attention right now may be dead ends.

Nobody cares about online identities? Really?

Nobody cares about online identities? Really? /img/online-identities.png

Reading my recent posts about “Mastodon flaws"that are NOT flaws and online identities in general, an online contact of mine replied with several comments, whose main points I believe may be synthesized as follows (any error here is mine, of course):

No, you don't need another Twitter. Or another Medium

Last year, we had the “buy Twitter” campaign. Now, the arrival of Mastodon, the last “Twitter replacement”, has caused a lot of renewed talks about what we’d need to replace this or that digital platform. I argue that many of these proposals, wishes and plans may be misplaced, or looking in the wrong directions. Two good examples of what I mean are in this post about Mastodon, and in this thread on mastodon.

On Mastodon flaws, and decentralized services

Mastodon is the latest “Twitter replacement”. Yesterday I said on Twitter that something described as its “bigger flaw” seems no big deal to me. Here I explain why. I had never heard of Mastodon until 2 days ago, when I wrote that yes, even Nazis can use it. Yesterday I found this comment on BoingBoing to a more complete article by Sean Bonner. The Boingboing comment ends with this quote:

Mastodon, or: Can Nazi use Free as in Freedom Software?

Short answer: yes, they can. Regardless of what some websites are saying. Mastodon is “an alternative to Twitter”. Mashable just wrote that: “Mastodon.. in many ways it’s like Twitter, but it is also so not like Twitter… What makes it stand out? It has better privacy controls than Twitter. Also, neo-Nazis are explicitly banned.” and then, 2 lines below: “Mastodon is a type of free and open source software (FOSS) known as “GNU social.