The question of Mastodon vs Vero for photography came into sharp focus recently for me. I’ve used both over the past year. But now I’m clear…
… one is definitely better than the other.
Why did I join both Mastodon and Vero?
I’ve used both Mastodon and Vero for my photography. I wasn’t pitting them against each other, in a Mastodon vs Vero contest looking for a “winner”. Both platforms allow photographers to share their work and build followings. Both offer much better environments generally than Twitter, Threads, or Instagram, or other rivals, for a variety of reasons. (I now also use Refrakt and foto; I wrote a review of Refrakt, and will write one about foto when foto goes live.)
The user experience for photographers differs drastically between Mastodon and Vero. Photographers need to take those very different user experiences into account. Which one works best for you depends on what your goals are, what sacrifices you’re willing to make, and what kind of company you want to keep.
My frustration had been growing with the explicit and implicit pressures people on Twitter experienced about competition, getting ahead, and careerism. The whole NFT mania and NFT-bro culture that frequently dominated photography-related Twitter conversations turned me off.
I deleted my Twitter account back in November 2022 after Musk started firing people wholesale and generally treating people who worked at Twitter shamefully. I couldn’t support a company like that with my participation. I hoped to find a kinder, gentler, higher quality alternative to Twitter for photography.
At the time, Mastodon seemed promising. Its open-source, decentralised concept intrigued me. I wondered how it would function in practice.
Vero seemed … strange. Early in 2022 I’d taken a look and decided against it. I saw a lot of hashtag pumping, like #abstractphotography tags on pictures of sunsets or random stuff. But when one of my favourite photographers on Twitter mentioned that he’d had a good experience on Vero, I decided to give it another try. So I reactivated my account on Vero. I was pleasantly surprised by a considered and considerate community of photographers sharing admirable work.
Mastodon vs Vero for photography: how are they different?
You can find plenty of posts on the Web about Mastodon and Vero as social media apps. Both gained visibility and membership following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
Moderators enforce terms, conditions, and community guidelines on both platforms. Neither platform uses any algorithms to control what you see and when. Instead you see a chronological feed of people and subjects that interest you.
Comparing Mastodon vs Vero for photography, here are the most important differences:
| Vero | Mastodon | |
|---|---|---|
| Protects your rights | Yes | No |
| Browser version | No | Yes |
| Mobile app | iOS and Android | iOS and Android |
| Desktop app | Yes | No |
| Single instance (one source of images) | Yes | No |
| Federated (multiple independent “instances”) | No | Yes |
| Engagement | Good | Poor |
| Quality of work | Excellent | Poor, amateur |
Protecting your rights
Vero protects your rights as far as it can; Mastodon doesn’t and won’t.
Every photographer needs to protect their work online. There are a variety of ways to do that. One really basic precaution websites take to prevent unauthorised saving of images is to disable right-click on their pages, which eliminates the popup menu that includes the option to save images directly to your device. It’s not technically possible to completely prevent any theft of your images. Visitors can always take screenshots. Even so, it makes sense to take as many precautions as you can. Just because a burglar can break a window to get into your house, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your door.
You can’t right click in the Vero app or save an image directly except by screenshot. At all. Mastodon in any browser allows right-clicking.
Why does that matter?
If someone right-clicks on your image and saves it, they can easily use it as if they own it. As an example of how that can cause reputational and financial harm to you as a photographer, countless creators continue to lose their work to bad actors on Twitter, Threads, Instagram, and other unprotected sites. Scammers right-click and save the images, then use those images to create profiles pretending to be those creators. The bad actors sell those images and pocket the profits.
People purchasing those stolen images discover they own something worth less than it would have been if they’d purchased from the true creator, and in many cases the stolen images they pay for are lower quality than if they’d purchased from the creators.
Vero protects you, Mastodon refuses to.
Photographers have a crucial interest in who has copies of their images. Thieves can build a portfolio of your images and pretend to galleries or collectors that they’re you. The specific ways they use those images doesn’t matter. Your copyright and ownership of your work does matter.
Vero makes it difficult to steal your work. Mastodon doesn’t and the CEO has stated that he has no plans to do so.
When I discovered that Mastodon doesn’t prevent right-clicking or other common ways to save media from web pages, I posted an enhancement request on Mastodon’s GitHub instance. Here’s what I posted and the responses I got:
Both of those responses are bizarre but the response from the Founder, CEO, and lead developer of Mastodon “Gargron” is the worst.
It’s a stretch to call disabling right-clicking digital rights management (DRM). DRM refers to:
… technologies [that] govern the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works (e.g. software, multimedia content) and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Technologies
Gargon’s absolute refusal to do anything to protect artists’ rights means Mastodon is not a safe place for photographers. Sure you can add watermarks or upload poor, low resolution copies. But those options damage your work and don’t present it in its best light.
Preventing right-click protection of images and other image scraping methods is a trivial technical task. Many WordPress plugins enable it, for example. So the CEO’s refusal to protect artists who post to his system reveals a foundational principle at Mastodon, that artists don’t deserve protection.
The other response from “daprice” exposes the underlying assumption that informs the Mastodon ethos: anyone should have the right to use their tools to steal your stuff. Which of course is legally and morally indefensible.
Just on this basis alone, deciding between Mastodon vs Vero for photography is a clear choice. Vero protects you, Mastodon refuses to.
Browser vs app
This is perhaps the most important difference for photographers. It determines in practice how the platforms manage your ownership and rights to the images you post.
Vero is purely app-based. There’s no browser version. Vero offers apps for iOS and Android, and a desktop app for Mac and Windows. Crucially, no one can save images you post within the apps themselves. There’s no right-click menu in the Vero desktop app, for instance, and no save function. Anyone can take screenshots but no software can completely prevent that in any operating system.
Mastodon offers mobile apps but no desktop application. On a desktop or laptop it operates in the browser. Anyone can save and use your images any way they like, either by right-clicking and saving an image, or by any other method their browser enables.
Single instance: one source of images
Vero operates as a “single instance”, meaning that Vero stores and shares information in one single system. It uses multiple servers, but manages its content as a single entity: Vero. Vero’s copy protection of your images is built into the platform. No one can bypass it (except of course to take a screenshot which is technically impossible to prevent).
Mastodon operates as a federation of multiple instances. Anyone can set up their own Mastodon server and operate it separately from any other server. The mechanics and philosophy don’t matter when discussing Mastodon for photographers. The crucial detail here is that even if Gargron changes his mind and institutes right-click protection for photographers, individual administrators who host the various instances of Mastodon servers across their “fediverse” could choose not to update their Mastodon server software to implement that protection. Or they could disable it, because Mastodon is open-source software.
Engagement
By “engagement” I mean the quantity and quality of interactions: how many times people like, promote, and comment on other people’s posts.
Vero has lively engagement. Almost every image posted by anyone has at least some likes and multiple comments. People appreciate and converse about each other’s work. And photographers regularly introduce other photographers to their audience with recommendations to follow and appreciate their work:
Vero’s culture demonstrates generosity and community. Using Vero for photography feels welcoming and engaged.
On Mastodon however, very few images receive any kind of engagement. I’ve removed my images from Mastodon, so I’m not talking about my own posts. Instead, I just scrolled through scores of image posts and only two had any likes, comments, or shares. Other than those two, the other images I saw seemed not to grab anyone’s attention. (That may be a result of poor quality images, see below.)
The engagement problem affects administrators too. The supposedly photography-centric Mastodon for photographers instance, photog.social, had only just over 500 active users as of May 2023:
But the admin hasn’t posted any featured image (the blank rectangle above the short blurb). The “learn more” button doesn’t do anything. And photog.social doesn’t accept new users:
That notice about registration being “disabled for the time being” has been up since late 2022.
Given the low active user count and the inability to join, it appears that the photog.social admin is disengaged or non-existent. I regularly see posts on my instance (mastodon.art) from accounts on photog.social so there are people over there. But lack of engagement by the administrator and a “no entry” sign up to new members doesn’t foster a thriving community.
In contrast to Vero, using Mastodon for photography feels lonely and pointless.
Quality
How anyone defines quality depends to a great extent on taste. Technique or amount of work don’t necessarily correlate with quality (you can have excellent technique and spend a lot of time and effort creating something meh).
Having said that, to my personal taste, the images on Vero feel much more professional, accomplished, thoughtful. In contrast, very few images I see on Mastodon grab my attention either for subject matter or execution. Maybe other people find those Mastodon images attractive, but the lack of engagement with them (no likes, comments, boosts) indicates otherwise.
Mastodon vs Vero for Photographers: summary
Vero surpasses Mastodon on all the 5 criteria that I think differentiate Mastodon and Vero for photography.
Protects your rights: the Vero desktop app protects you, Mastodon’s browser version doesn’t.
Browser vs app: Vero’s mobile and desktop apps guarantee good, consistent presentation of your work. Mastodon’s presentation is more cluttered.
Single instance: as a single entity, Vero provides a seamless and coherent user experience. Mastodon as a federated collection of disparate communities feels disjointed and incoherent.
Engagement: Vero hosts a thriving, engaged community of photographers who appreciate and boost each other’s work. That doesn’t happen on Mastodon.
Quality: the images I see on Vero consistently inspire and enlighten me. Not so on Mastodon. Yes, that’s somewhat a matter of taste, but some things are recognised standards that true artists meet – like composition, attention to detail (horizontal horizons!), and focus.
So which is the better alternative: Mastodon vs Vero for photographers?
Vero, without a doubt: quality, protection, community. The Vero desktop app (officially a beta) looks elegant, although it misses some of the bells and whistles of the Vero mobile app.
What about other platforms – Threads, Behance, Flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, …
I enjoy Threads. It’s a much kinder, saner place than Twitter. However, it allows saving images with minimal effort, which undermines any creative ownership a photographer might have. I post images there occasionally, but at low resolution and with borders.
Behance is lovely but not a “social” platform; it’s more of a portfolio showcase. It does protect your work against right-click scraping and other unauthorised saving methods.
Flickr is a great alternative to Instagram for showcasing and selling work. Lots of engagement, a fast lightbox with a zoom feature. Right clicking doesn’t enable direct saving of images, but other keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+i do. That makes the zoom feature of the lightbox a little problemmatic: you need to upload a large, high quality image for the lightbox zoom to do your image justice, but that also makes it easier for people to steal your high quality work.
Exposure has the same pros and cons as Flickr, except that you have to pay for the privilege.
LinkedIn has a thriving photography community, and it protects your work by only showing a scaled down version of your images. But it doesn’t protect your images from unauthorised saving. Even so, since it only shows a scaled down version of your images, you can upload a good quality but small dimension version which goes some way to reducing the risk of image theft.
Tumblr and Pinterest … ugh, no. Just randomish collections of images taken from other sites, often without attribution. No protection against copying.
Instagram declared itself video-centric quite a while ago. When I was on Twitter, I saw many photographer refugees from Instagram who were relieved that they didn’t feel they had to fight the Instagram algorithm to gain attention and followings. And yet they did the same thing on Twitter. Trying to beat the algorithm is a loser’s game, because social media is not your friend. Also, as a Facebook/Meta property, it will collect and abuse your personal data.
Facebook may have some value for commercial or wedding photographers. But it’s not designed as a showcase for artists. Worse, like Instagram and any other Meta platform, it scrapes your personal data and behaviour both on the site and wherever else you go unless you take precautions.
YouPic is a scam site. Sooner or later “Lisa” will contact you (like she has me and countless others) saying she has a client who wants to buy your work but she needs you to pay YouPic for a pro membership before they can proceed.
FAQ
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon is the name of the server software that people can download to set up their own hosted “instances” of Mastodon. So Mastodon as a social media platform is a loose federation of independent, volunteer admins and members who post content to it. There are no algorithms on Mastodon that determine what you see and when you see it. Rather it shows a chronological feed of posts from people you follow, interests you follow, and posts from other instances that the moderator on your instance allows. (So the moderator is kind of an algorithm.)
What is Vero?
Vero is a social media platform available as apps for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. It simply shows a chronological feed of posts by people you follow, interests you follow. Members can post images, links, and other types of content. Members can introduce other members whose work they admire. It’s very image centric, and artist friendly.
Which is better for photographers: Mastodon or Vero?
Vero. It’s elegant, presents images well while protecting the artists’ intellectual property, and hosts a thriving, welcoming community. The Vero desktop app (officially a beta) misses some of the bells and whistles of the Vero mobile app.
What do you think?
Do you have any questions or thoughts you want to share about Mastodon for photography vs Vero for photography? Comment below!
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