Why you should choose Mastodon. Everything you need to know.
1) You can federate or not Federate and rest assured where ever you land at, the familiar ui will forever stay.
You can join any server/instance with any focused topic you want. It doesn't matter how many users are eon there as you can federate. If you don't want to federate and rather stay locked into just one local server you can do that too, but in that case user count does matter more, if you want activity and some amount of interaction and variety. No matter what server you decide to join the UI of Mastodon will always be available. There's no such one server that hosts all the messages on Mastodon that we all relief on it all is built up on from many smaller servers adding up to the bigger Fediverse. There is also no restricted license and corporate agenda keeping people from keeping the UI they once loved alive. Struggles many people had to put with with regards to other types of licenses.
- Despite using the same UI, each Mastodon server-instance has it's own personality, moderation practices, standards, exceptions and Morals.
Some servers even have multiple versions of the same server. Like on Sakurajima, an anime focused server ironically named after a volcano. They might have a version for Mastodon, Elk, or even Sharkey. Some of these just use a different web ui for Mastodon, others are their own platform entirely but still Federate with Mastodon.
Instance hosts have their own priorities and rules. Some aim for care and treating users with attention and respect, others follow the Mastodon covenant, others don't and risk being filled with.. not the nicest of people. Some servers might have standards like requiring new users to have pfps or get their account frozen untill problems resolved, or risk being permanently or temp. banned.
Find where you feel at home at on Mastodon.
Why not choose Mastodon.
It is different form regular social media platforms and can be challenging for some to get use to.