Sometimes social media sites can get weird, and its better to move on. Many organizations such as SURF, the Dutch Government, EU Commission, among others have been moving to Mastodon.  

Mastodon is not a single social media website, it is an open-source software project that uses a decentralized communications protocol (ActivityPub) so that anyone can set up their own server and communicate with other Mastodon servers.  

This way a user can join a Mastodon server such as social.edu.nl, follow and post to other users on social.edu.nl, but also to other servers such as mappers on mapstodon.space, open-source developers on fosstodon.org, Nederlanders on mastodon.nl, or wherever else that shares the protocol. Users are identified by their username and server. The Geo Data Team account is identified by @uu_geo_data_team@social.edu.nl.  

• This decentralized approach to servers means that no one person can buy the platform and make it weird. 
• Mastodon has stronger moderation tools to give you the ability to filter out topics you don’t want to see. 
• There is also no central algorithm to watch your activity and suggest content from people or topics you don’t follow.  
• The open-source nature of the communications standard and the software means that you can also make your own tools that are interoperable.  
• If you want to move servers, you can also take your data, and move your account to a new server, and the old server can forward to your new profile address.  

SURF has set up a Mastodon server for employees at participating SURF institutions to easily join with single sign on.  

You can find out how to join SURF’s Mastodon instance as an individual or as a team here: Getting Started with SURF Mastodon Hosting