Arin Basu :white_check_mark: is a user on mastodon.cloud. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

Q: What's a good article on the background of GNU Social and the technologies underlying Mastodon?

A: This: "What is GNU Social and is Mastodon Social a 'Twitter Clone'?"
robek.world/featured/what-is-g

h/t @maiyannah who knows vastly more about this than I.

"Mastodon: Here to stay or DOA?"

Better than the title would suggest -- strengths/weaknesses analysis.

holtz.com/blog/blog/mastodon-h 

@dredmorbius I think @shelholtz hits the nail on the head with this article, that just having an account at one instance is never enough, it should be around your interest; likewise, will likely to carve out a different revenue model than what we have seen with social media so far (er ... centralised social media). This is definitely a space to watch, rather than proclaim DOA.

@arinbasu @dredmorbius @shelholtz

2 thoughts:

1) Interest-based instances seem a natural way forward, a bit like subreddits without reddit. Users get a local timeline of shared interests plus ability to signal that interest across federation.

2) Fracturing may seem like a problem. I don't think so. People will always make boundaries. Houses have walls, properties have fences, etc. Free disassociation is as important as free association.

Arin Basu :white_check_mark: @arinbasu

@MariusAgricola @dredmorbius @shelholtz
Excellent points; I think so too, as and instances very deftly meld the two concepts people network with interest network, through its localised instances and distributed nature of the fediverse. As @dredmorbius wrote recently, instances with different user count feel very different, yet the two can coexist.