#Twitter
#TwitterMigration
#twitterdown
#twitterexodus
#twitterrefugees
A recent Salon article lists 5 potential problems during a mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon:
Despite the silly headline (we would hope it doesn't become a new Twitter) would anyone be interested in commenting on any or all of these 5?
" 1. ... finding a server to join on Mastodon can be hard, especially when a flood of people trying to find servers leads to the creation of waitlists, and the rules and values of the people running a server aren't always easy to find.
2. ... there are significant financial and technical challenges with maintaining servers that grow with the number of members and their activity. After the honeymoon is over, Mastodon users should be prepared for membership fees, NPR-style fundraising campaigns or podcast-style promotional ads to cover server hosting costs that can go into the hundreds of dollars per month per server.
3. ... despite calls for newspapers, universities and governments to host their own servers, there are complicated legal and professional questions that could severely limit public institutions' abilities to moderate their "dorms" effectively. Professional societies with their own methods of verification and established codes of conduct and ethics may be better equipped to host and moderate Mastodon servers than other types of institutions.
4. ... the current "nuclear option" of servers entirely cutting ties with other servers leaves little room for repairing relations and reengagement. Once the tie between two servers is severed, it would be difficult to renew it. This situation could drive destabilizing user migrations and reinforce polarizing echo chambers.
5. ... there are tensions between longtime Mastodon users and newcomers around content warnings, hashtags, post visibility, accessibility and tone that are different from what was popular on Twitter."
@wjbeaver
I feel like this article has some issues, particularly with 1, 3, 4, and 5. I'll let others elaborate on that.
2 also kinda depends on whether you are using Mastodon or other ActivityPub software, some of which is more tailored to small server populations than Mastodon is, but I will let that slide.
