The Problem With the Fediverse & 'Twitter Clone' (From an Artist's Perspective)
Update May 2024: This post has been edited to soften up the languages and add some new information. X's old name is kept as a deliberate choice.
Twitter is kind of screwed right now, and there's a lot of talk about where to migrate. Mastodon came up a lot in these discussions. It does seem to be the best replacement for the moment - it looks a lot like Twitter and it behaves kind of like Twitter.
Unfortunately, Mastodon - and basically every other federated social network - are completely useless to me, an artist. Allow me to explain. (For the sake of simplicity, I will only be mentioning Mastodon from this point forward, but this blog applies to every social network that's part of the Fediverse.)
Mastodon is not a social media
I'm sure most of you here already know that, but in case this post somehow reached the non-nerd peeps (hi), Mastodon isn't one social media website but rather a broader protocol. To compare it to artist terms, Twitter and other social media websites run by your usual Big Tech™ would be like specific brand of art supply - Faber&Castell, Prismacolor, or Crayola. Meanwhile, Mastodon is more akin to the recipe to create those art supply. Anyone can mix water, gum arabic, pigment and honey together to create watercolor, just like how anyone can set up their own Mastodon instance/server. And like your very own watercolor paint, customised to your liking, you can also customised your Mastodon instance however you want, which brings me to my next point...
Mastodon is niche by design
Photo by ReneeissanceColours on Etsy
Look at these colorshifting watercolors. They are handmade by a small business, and they look absolutely gorgeous. They are also designed to do just one thing - shift color when you look at it from different angles. They are very pretty colors (and if I were a traditional artist, I would be ordering them already), but you need more than just these to paint. I mean, sure, you can try to paint Mona Lisa with only shiny paint, but the result is going to look quite... interesting to put kindly.
The same concept also applies to social media. Federated social media is similar to handmade paint by design - small-scale, specialised, and not going to sell your data for profit. This also means that it's less accessible to the general public. One look at an instance list of Mastodon and you will see some rather niche focus, such as Programmer Art or xxPhoenixRisingxx's Bird Furry Roleplay Server. Of course, niche interests in all corners of the internet - Facebook has some of the most specific groups on it. But remember, an instance is basically a whole social media website of its own - Mastodon does not host these instances on its server. This is by design and is not a fault - it's good to be with people who are interested in the same things as you do! But that brings us to the next point...
You're only going to reach other artists
Okay, maybe not "only", more like "mostly". Your account is stored on an instance (remember, an instance is like a whole social media website), and when you launch Mastodon, you're mostly going to see posts from people within your instance. It's kind of like opening Twitter and seeing tweets from people you follow. You could switch to For You page, but then you'll have to deal with the dreaded bluechecks. Yikes.
In the same vein, you could visit the first link that came up when you google Mastodon, mastodon.social, and see what's roughly the equivalent of Mastodon For You page. And it's about as interesting as watching the TV, which would make sense as it's a general-purpose instance.
"But that's an instance, not a For You page!" I heard you loud and clear. Here's the thing - tech-savvy people don't realise how the general public don't really know - or care - about the innerworkings of their tech. They just wanted something to work and easily so. I got my sister a Raspberry Pi to use as a cheap desktop setup, considering she only need a basic computer for schoolwork (Chromebooks aren't sold here) - we ended up getting her an iPad because she could not comprehend the RPi at all. What constitutes digital literacy has changed significantly - from turtle graphics (sidenote: I learned turtle graphics in computer class when I was around 10 and I loved it) to Minecraft:Educational Edition, from creating clip-art-decorated printed poster for your small business to churning out daily Instagram stories.
What I'm saying here is to most people there's no difference between mastodon.social and the Mastodon program. When you consider that the press has been touting Mastodon as Twitter replacement, it's easy for the general public to think that mastodon.social is the social media website Mastodon. Artists are going to be pretty disappointed to find that mastodon.social is mostly populated by tech nerds and people who hate Elon Musk. I suppose artists could post on mastodon.social anyway, considering it's a general-purpose instance, but that brings me to my next point...
Mastodon is full of nerds (and that's probably not going to change)
Let's be real, you know the kind of people currently active on Mastodon (and the Fediverse at large) - tech-savvy, concerned about privacy, and left-leaning. There's a vibe to every social media - Facebook is for boomers, TikTok is for zoomers, and LinkedIn is for corporate drones. And according to my artist friends I've spoken to, both of them agreed that Mastodon isn't really the place to be if you're the more artistic sort. Like, what does "federated" even mean? We sometimes have a hard time figuring out how to set the DPI in Procreate for god's sake (in our defense, it's tucked away in "create new template" menu). Internet artists already suffered enough at the hands of deviantArt cringe Youtuber and NFT/crypto/AI bros. The last thing we need is more people to question our My Little Pony OCs.
And due to the very nature of Mastodon, this atmosphere is probably not going away anytime soon. To be clear, this is completely fine. Many specialised social media exist. There's even some for art, like deviantArt, Toyhouse, and Inkblot for example. But - and this is the big one - here's the thing...
Artists need to be seen by non-artists too
... because it's the people who can't create art that pay you to make art. Crazy concept, I know. This is what makes Twitter worked before they fumbled the bag. Twitter was kind of like a big convention hall, with different community in different corner, but people can still see other community from where they are. Mastodon is more like many separate rooms where one need to make a concerted effort to see things outside your turf. Due to this, Mastodon is horrible for reach and exposure, which are the two things I don't see Mastodon (the program) putting on the priority list anytime soon.
TL;DR?
Mastodon is terrible for artists because it's not designed to give you any boost in exposure. It's not bad as furry roleplay forum replacement though.
Now what?
As of 2024, a couple federated Twitter clones have arrived, unfortunately not with a bang but a whimper. Bluesky is open to the public yet nobody uses it (nobody that does art, at least). Meanwhile, Threads by Instagram saw a sharp 80% daily user drop. And Threads was made by Meta! I suppose we artists just accepted the fact that nothing will truly replace Twitter... er... X. I suppose people just got tired of social media in general. I suppose we might be going through post-social media era right now? In an age where human connection is more precarious than ever, maybe that is the only natural outcome.