Getting acquainted with Mastodon -- Instances

Elon Musk has to buy Twitter after all. I took this as an opportunity to look at Mastodon at the weekend, a decentralised alternative. TL/DR: super!

What I had to understand first was the concept of an “instance”. My first impression is that you can compare a Mastodon server to an email server. Imagine that in order to write emails, you would have to create an account with one single company in the US and agree to their terms-of-service. Every email you send would go through that company. Not a good idea. That just seems wrong. Fortunately, emails work differently. I can create an account with a server of my choice, in Germany for example with Posteo.de, web.de or gmx.de. And I can send my messages anywhere, to any email server in the world.

This decentralised approach now also works with short messages. Via Mastodon. I can choose my server, or my instance as it is now called. But my messages can be read by all Mastodon users, no matter which instance they use. I find that convincing.

Which instance is the right one for me? Who offers me a Mastodon account now?

My research this weekend revealed 55 potential providers. I collected these manually, I did not find a central overview of providers. (EDIT: As is sometimes the case, after writing this I found the link to the Fediverse Observer. There is even an API there. I'll take a closer look at that another time).

Using the Mastodon API, it is possible to retrieve information from any server. This is easily done via the msocial package that I just uploaded to Github. It uses the new pipe operator introduced with R 4.0. The remotes package is needed for installation, the packages data.table and knitr are needed for this vignette.

#install.packages("remotes")
#remotes::install_github("https://github.com/kweinert/msocial")
library(msocial)
library(data.table)
library(knitr)

The information is retrieved from the instances as follows.

stats <- get_instances() |>
lapply(get_instance_stats) |>
rbindlist()

The code is actually only given for transparency reasons. The result is much more important:

instance	registration	user_count	status_count	country_code
https://mastodon.social	TRUE	814812	39787754	DE
https://mastodon.cloud	TRUE	220222	4424023	US
https://mstdn.social	TRUE	76258	5503036	IN
https://fosstodon.org	TRUE	24187	1031281	FR
https://mastodon.xyz	FALSE	23870	1749182	US
https://mastodon.technology	FALSE	23837	1334756	US
https://mstdn.io	FALSE	18173	2549736	US
https://qoto.org	TRUE	17741	821107	GB
https://social.tchncs.de	TRUE	17621	1648232	DE
https://pixelfed.de	TRUE	13569	99447	DE
https://octodon.social	FALSE	11923	2117274	NA
https://chaos.social	FALSE	9198	3025391	IN
https://det.social	TRUE	8053	35106	DE
https://mastodon.fun	TRUE	7709	761778	US
https://norden.social	TRUE	6258	424112	GR
https://hostux.social	TRUE	5584	365994	LU
https://meow.social	TRUE	5329	620144	GB
https://vis.social	TRUE	5181	67908	FR
https://scholar.social	FALSE	5144	299049	FR
https://climatejustice.social	FALSE	4312	66041	US
https://aus.social	TRUE	4209	234313	DE
https://linuxrocks.online	TRUE	3845	185353	US
https://social.targaryen.house	FALSE	3807	109173	US
https://sueden.social	TRUE	2730	14666	US
https://mastodon.partipirate.org	TRUE	2417	31210	FR
https://oc.todon.fr	TRUE	2377	116484	GB
https://mastodon.gougere.fr	TRUE	1809	207780	GB
https://awoo.space	FALSE	1743	615982	NL
https://aleph.land	TRUE	1542	215486	FR
https://animalliberation.social	TRUE	1182	3023	US
https://dresden.network	TRUE	1141	46729	NA
https://icosahedron.website	FALSE	818	374745	DE
https://im-in.space	TRUE	788	65204	DE
https://graz.social	TRUE	712	24131	DE
https://maly.io	TRUE	653	133470	DE
https://Bonn.social	TRUE	597	114461	DE
https://scicomm.xyz	TRUE	563	18918	GB
https://xoxo.zone	FALSE	497	59844	US
https://oldbytes.space	TRUE	382	96653	DE
https://berlin.social	TRUE	346	5423	DE
https://functional.cafe	TRUE	321	132400	DE
https://social.wxcafe.net	TRUE	289	148851	DE
https://fediscience.org	TRUE	289	11322	DE
https://mst3k.interlinked.me	TRUE	228	343658	CA
https://eupublic.social	TRUE	137	19777	US
https://masto.raildecake.fr	FALSE	136	5736	FR
https://dads.cool	TRUE	84	309546	FR
https://feuerwehr.social	TRUE	72	1173	UA
https://eupolicy.social	TRUE	65	622	DE
https://mastodon.indie.host	TRUE	24	11558	DE
https://mastodon.land	TRUE	13	4683	US
https://social.imirhil.fr	FALSE	3	47042	GB
https://social.diskseven.com	FALSE	1	75273	GB
https://share.elouworld.org	FALSE	1	1988	FR
https://social.lkw.tf	FALSE	1	6	FR
https://social.ballpointcarrot.net	FALSE	1	409	US
https://manx.social	TRUE	1	59	CA

The largest instances contain “mastodon” in their address and are rather generic communities. Other names suggest a technical / open source software focus (fosstodon, linuxrocks.online, functional.cafe). There are politically oriented communities (mastodon.partipirate.org, eupublic.social). Other servers have a geographical focus (graz.social, bonn.social, berlin.social, dresden.network, norden.social, sueden.social, aus.social).

I find qoto.org interesting, which also integrates other services like Gitlab and a group concept.

Some interesting communities are closed, e.g. scholar.social or chaos.social.

I can't really make sense of the country codes. To find out the countries, I used the packages iptools and rgeolocate:

get_instance_countrycode <- function(instance) {
    stopifnot(length(instance)==1) # not vectorized
    ip <- iptools::hostname_to_ip(gsub("^https://", "", instance))[[1]]
    if(length(ip)>1) ip <- ip[1]
    if(ip=="Not resolved") return(NA)
    fn <- system.file("extdata","GeoLite2-Country.mmdb", package = "rgeolocate")
    rgeolocate::maxmind(ip, fn)[,"country_code"]
}

I don't really trust the results. For example, aus.social claims to be hosted in Australia.

table(stats$country_code)

## 
## CA DE FR GB GR IN LU NL UA US 
##  2 17  9  7  1  2  1  1  1 14

I decided on berlin.social. Then the local timeline makes sense for me. I have also already found some R users and am now following them. I have also already found two interesting toots that will occupy me in depth in the short to medium term. All in all, a good start.