Everything about Mastodon is confusing.

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Maybe, but I doubt the kids are gonna flock to Mastodon. I'm happy to be wrong though.

Enough of the kids have flocked to Mastodon that articles bemoaning the death of the platform and ruin of the culture have already been written, admins have closed instances to new members and an almost xenophobic hostility towards Twitter newcomers is becoming commonplace. If that's not a sign of some degree of success, I don't know what is.

It doesn’t require any mental model more complicated than email to understand this. They’re running a server so people in their org can have mastodon addresses under @archive.org. You can follow, send, or receive messages to mastodon accounts on the archive.org domain, but you can’t have an account there yourself.

Similarly, you can send emails to people with @archive.org email addresses, but you can’t send email from an @archive.org email address (unless somebody at the internet archive let’s you)

didn't notice, oops!

Speaking to purpose, this may be helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509613

But it isn't for internal use, is it? It's fully federated and you can follow the accounts on there from every other server. Thry just don't allow everyone to create accounts on that server.

"for official use" might be better?

The purpose seems to be for people who work for Internet Archive to be able to have an official presence on the fediverse for public announcements. Things that would be tweeted by various people connected with the IA can now also be tooted.