>Finally, with instances, you keep control: if you find that you don't like the moderation policies or culture of a particular instance, you're always free to pick up and move to a different one.

Last I heard, Mastodon didn't support migration between instances while still keeping followers, etc. Instead, you have to essentially start from scratch with a new account on a new instance. This is a serious problem because it strongly discourages exodus; Twitter itself shows that people will put up with a lot of nonsense before leaving to alternatives because they've cultivated a brand and a following and don't want to lose it all. Moderators of instances are not a static thing; like any political system it shifts with whoever is in charge over time. An instance that seemed friendly to a user initially can over time become more oppressive to them, but the user has invested so much into that instance that they would have to leave behind that they'd put up with it when they shouldn't have to.

Yeah, I spent a few weeks (months?) on Mastodon, and even though I was on a cooperatively owned and operated instance[0] it just wasn't a substitute for a fully p2p social network.

I found another network called Scuttlebutt[1] that I've been using almost daily. It has a few neat features:

- your account is just your public key

- your profile is an append-only feed of JSON messages, each cryptographically signed

- when you follow people you replicate their profile on your device

- messages are transmitted with an eventually consistent gossip network, which is fast and resilient

- you can assign nicknames to yourself and others, and since there isn't a central naming authority (if you have two friends named Matt, you get to disambiguate however you would in real life)

- all data is downloaded locally, so you can view all the same content whether you're online or off-grid

- you can reply while offline and your messages will sync when you peer again (again, think gossip networks)

- there are tons of different clients and implementations and applications running on the network

  - Twitter-like posts  

  - IRC-like chat  

  - blogging  

  - Signal-like private messages
  
  - image search  

  - chess (!)  

  - secret sharding among friends (!!)  

  - mutual credit  

  - by far the best community I've ever been a part of

[0]: https://social.coop

[1]: https://scuttlebutt.nz

EDIT: having trouble formatting the list, did I mention that Scuttlebutt supports full Markdown?

Giving scuttlebutt a try - thanks! Here are my experiences:

1. App seems quite unpolished for Windows, it looks best not maximized. I was asked to provide a name and was a little disconcerted by the message that this is going to be public and cannot be deleted.

2. I've now joined a public server. This required going to a github page, following a link and copying and pasting an "invite" into the Patchwork application. The first one I tried threw and error that I didn't understand, but the second one worked and connected me to over 700 people.

3. The channels page is completely empty.. it seems like all I can see is a feed of people following one another.

4. Problem above solved by re-starting the app! Now taking a long time to download information, but I can see actual content.

5. I posted my first reply to someone's message. You get the prompt reminding you that everything is public and forever every time it seems.

My overall impression after about 30 minutes doing the above is that this is potentially really cool, but a few steps away from being immediately usable by someone who isn't tech oriented. Going to try a few more Scuttlebutt apps as I'm curious how well my identity can transition across different clients.

It seems like very early times for most people even considering the downsides of centralized 'social media,' and it will take time and hand-holding to demonstrate the alternative possibilities. A great client app that could unify the user experience, but offer power-user features could go a long way. Most people that I know (older) are not overtly interested in participating in any public social network (i.e. Twitter).

I wonder if one could build a more closed, private, white-list-default (triple opt-in!) type of social network on top of SSB with the right client software?

[0] "A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB)." https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork

[1] "A database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols" https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt