I vented my concerns on Mastodon before. Multiple times. But I was moderately optimistic.

Now, after years, I have to say that little changed. Almost all the technical issues are still there, but they never were my main concern. What bothered me was Mastodon’s sociology and the “instances” dynamic.

A lot of people are unrelentingly annoying. Having a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence (even if video game–related) was often enough to have people scolding me for no reason. But even that I could tolerate.

But then there are the instances and their admins: feudal castles ruled by feudal lords, fighting or allying with each other, enacting arbitrary rules even more arbitrarily enforced.

The other day, mastodon.social deleted a post by a guy I know because it criticized (legitimately, and by stating factual truths) another instance. Recently, another instance added a rule prohibiting talking badly about other instances. They said it is to protect the quality of the Fediverse. That’s funny, because I constantly get false and deranged posts on the Explore tab, and I don’t think that criticizing an instance admin is the problem with Mastodon’s quality.

In any case, that’s the last straw. I refuse to be part of such infantile power play.

Mastodon’s problem is not a technology issue; it is a people issue.

P.S. This is not about the Fediverse as a whole or ActivityPub

I just want to say that this is a Mastodon-specific issue. The ActivityPub protocol is, obviously, not responsible for this. Probably other services of the Fediverse (Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc.) have the same problems. I don’t know. It didn’t look that way to me, but maybe it is just because they are small in comparison.

And, of course, there are exceptions. There are instances and admins that genuinely care about Mastodon’s mission. I know them. It is a shame they have to be affected by this state of affairs.

But I am too old for this. I have little time for things that are no longer interesting or fun.