Avoid the Nutballs (and Conflict) on Mastodon

There is yet another Twitter clone floating in the ether. It'south called Mastodon, and it's getting enough attention that analysts and pundits are chiming in, including onetime PCMag EIC Lance Ulanoff.

Ulanoff and I used to get dorsum and forth with contrary opinions, and I was hoping to do that once again, but his statement is pretty much based on the fact that he could not cajole William Shatner to connect with him on the system. It seems similar that's a bargain billow for Lance. No Shatner? I'm out. End of story.

The Mastodon buzz appears to stalk from the decentralized nature of the product. There is no cardinal authority, and information technology has an unconventional, free and open up aura about it. You tin set up a customs, I can gear up a community, we can all set upward a customs.

Mastodon is non the first Twitter-like, open-source system. Chyrp, Sweetter, and Twoorl all come to heed along with Identi, Revou, and others. What makes Mastodon different is the interlinking. My podcasting partner, Adam Curry, even set a Mastodon server for the No Calendar podcast "customs" which I joined, of course.

The offset affair Back-scratch noticed is that much of the "we are all humans living on the same planet" social justice warriors have already blacklisted the No Agenda server and other non-PC communities. He joked to me on a contempo show that those who advocate "No Borders, No Nations" are the first to put up borders and lock out those who don't abide by their anti-Trump, anti-Republican, anti-Brexit, anti-capitalism, safety-space philosophy.

This may exist a bonus if you lot think about it. It volition machine-segregate abrasive nutballs who are incompatible with the general population; hate dominates in some quarters of Twitter. That may not happen on Mastodon, where communities constitute boundaries much similar what we used to run into on pre-internet Computerized Bulletin Lath Arrangement (CBBS) systems.

On Twitter, I cannot do much more than than block an individual from communicating with me, but there are all sorts of workarounds for serious troublemakers and trolls. With Mastodon, there are blacklists of entire servers where people have gathered, a structure that has a lot of potential. Whether information technology can connect Ulanoff with Shatner remains to be seen. I'm guessing no.

About John C. Dvorak

John C. Dvorak

John C. Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the co-host of the twice weekly podcast, the No Agenda Show. His work is licensed effectually the globe. Previously a columnist for Forbes, PC/Calculating, Computer Shopper, MacUser, Barrons, the December Professional likewise as other newspapers and magazines. Former editor and consulting editor for InfoWorld, he also appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, and the Vancouver Sun. He was on the start-up team for C/Net also as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) he hosted Silicon Spin for iv years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape Television set shows. His Internet evidence Cranky Geeks was considered a …