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Mastodon is a decentralized social media platform, meaning it is not hosted by a single company or entity. Instead, it is hosted by countless individuals. Think of each Mastodon server as a village. Each village is governed by an admin and (usually) some moderators to enforce their own unique rules decided by the admin. Inside each village, people can freely post things and have conversations within the rules of the village. To join the village, you have to create an account. From that account, you can not only interact with people from your own village, but you can also interact with people from other villages! You can follow them, comment on their posts, or even retweet their posts! It’s like exchanging letters with a person from another village to know how the person is doing. But if you are curious about what’s going on and what discussions are happening in another village, you’ll have to join the other one by creating another account in that other village. That is the biggest difference between Twitter and Mastodon. You’ll have to hop between villages by switching between accounts in order to see all the discussions happening. Whereas Twitter is a big square with everyone in the world standing together and talking to each other at the same time, with the algorithm constantly recommending strangers’ posts to you.

中文版本：

Mastodon是一个去中心化的社交平台，也就是说它不是由一个单独的公司或个体来运营的，而是由无数的个人来运营的。你可以把每一个Mastodon服务器想象成一个村庄。每一个村庄都有一个主人和（通常情况下）几个管理员来管理并执行由主人定下的规定。每个村庄里，所有人都可以在规定范围内随意发布及讨论任何东西。如果你想加入那个村庄，你就要创建一个账号。你不但可以用那个账号和村子里的各位打交道，你甚至可以和其他村子的人打交道！你可以关注他们，在他们的帖子下留言，甚至转发他们的帖子！就好像你和那个其他村子里的人成了笔友，在互相交换信件了解对方的近况一样。不过如果你好奇另一个村子里发生了什么，里面的人都在讨论些什么，你就需要在那个村子里再创建一个新账号。这就是Mastodon和推特最大的区别。 如果你想知道正在发生的一切事情，你就需要一直切换账号，进入不同的村子才能做到。另一方面，推特则像是一个很大的广场，全世界的人都站在一起，同时和其他人说话，网站的算法也会一直给你推荐其他陌生人的帖子。