A note about Mastodon, an analogue of Twitter from the universe of decentralized social networks Fediverse
Against the backdrop of current events, when it is already becoming commonplace that social network owners block individual users (in their opinion, who are bad) with their own decisions, I became interested in the possibility of using decentralized p2p social networks. In order to see how the Fediverse ecosystem functions, I registered in Mastodon social networks (microblogging, an analogue of Twitter), and studied her accounts.
Mastodon is free software for deploying decentralized social networks that provide microblogging services similar to Twitter. Unlike the architecture of popular social networks, there are no central servers and anyone can deploy their own node or connect to an existing one. Each node has its own rules, terms of use and moderation policy, and the user can choose the one that is acceptable to him, and if necessary, switch to a more suitable one while maintaining his account.
It is part of the association of decentralized Internet services Fediverse, which also includes photo services (PixelFed), video- (Peertube), file hosting and much more, which are analogues of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Spotify, etc. Mastodon currently has over 4.4 million registered users.
The entire list of Internet services of the universe: diaspora, Friendica, GNU Social, hubzilla, Mastodon, misskey, peer tube, Pleroma, Pixelfed, Funkwhale
By the way, D. Trump is his new social network Truth Social uses Mastodona code (Donald’s accounts are almost all social networks blocked a year ago, amid protests against the results of the 2020 presidential election, and he took this into account)
During study wandering through Mastodon accounts and reaching South America found that Venezuelan politicians, along with the use of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Telegram, are also present there.
It was striking that many state officials and organizations of Venezuela are present on this social network. At the same time, the vast majority of registrations took place in April 2020, which, I think, speaks quite clearly about the indication of the country’s leadership (N. Maduro & Ko) create corresponding accounts in this decentralized social network. I’ve given a couple of proofs below..
Most of the accounts were active during the first few months after registration, but a number of them stopped publishing new “posts” after that, which indicates (IMHO) that they formally executed the circular of the country’s leadership.
Many high-ranking officials and leaders are active in daily activities in this social network even now. Among them are the official accounts of President N. Maduro, the main TV channel VTV, the press service and the Deputy Minister of Defense, the accounts of the army, aviation, police, finance ministry, economy, trade, etc.
Wangyu that the instructions of the Venezuelan government were sent on the possibility of conveying information to citizens of the country and foreign audiences in conditions of probable temporary or complete blocking Zuckerberg and Ko (with all due respect) social media accounts, as happened with President N. Maduro there (temporary blocking of a Facebook account for a month), and now with dozens hundreds of accounts in Russia.
That is, even in the absence of active activity of some registered accounts of ministries and departments of Venezuela, created a parallel stable information networkwhich allows you to bring information to the public in case of potential blocking of accounts by the owners of popular social networks.
In general, I recommend studying the “Fediverse Universe”, since it is not difficult, it is quite an interesting thing, with the total “dictatorship” of the above-described owners of social networks, it can help you manage your projects and projects. Well, or keep in touch with each other and keep your finger on the pulse.
In addition to the web version, among many used (on android) Tusky for Mastodon, no complaints, but probably there are more convenient applications. For iOS, there are also several options, but I haven’t used them. There is even for Sailfish, on the basis of which the domestic mobile OS “Aurora” works, as they say, our import-substitution hope)).
