Searching the wilds of Mastodon

This social network prides itself on keeping content apart

Hi there, reporters. In all my talk about Twitter alternatives, you may have noticed mention of a rather mysterious one: Mastodon.

Mastodon differs from most social networks in that it doesn’t store content on a central server. Instead, it uses federation, which “federates” content across the “fediverse.” Yes, those are the real words, and no, I won’t be explaining them in this short post.

There are definitely some upsides to federation, including that it’s more secure and less distracting. But it also makes Mastodon harder to search for a plain old keyword. A group at Indiana University, with the terrific name of OSoMe (pronounced “awesome”), made a tool for this.

OSoMe Mastodon Search checks for keywords, accounts and hashtags across a huge number of Mastodon servers and instances. A few parts are still hard to access, given the very intentional federation, but OSoMe Mastodon Search does a terrific job of tackling new technology with new counterparts.

Even if you aren’t Mastodon-ing yourself, reporters, don’t let important or newsworthy posts pass you by!

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