For me, "Mastodon" more closely resembles the BBS-with-Fidonet experience, which I suppose might be similar to UUCP/Usenet to a degree "before capitalism".
I never had a Twitter account and so never migrated from Twitter to Mastodon, and hadn't checked it out otherwise either.
But this comment is the first thing I've heard that makes me think I might love it. I loved the message subs on bbs networks.
The fact that an ordinary user/commenter conveyed that useful essential impression that all those journalists never did in the years since it's been newsworthy, would seem to fit right in with the article's point.
This article itself also finally presented some useful "what is the point? why might I want this?" points too about no algorithm manipulation.
Mostly all I've seen are vague stuff that it's not Twitter and that it's federated kind of like email. But that really doesn't say anything useful. If it's like email, we already have email. How is email an alternative to Twitter and Facebook? They really have failed to write effectively about it.
