Mastodon: All you need to know about the platform Twitter users are switching to

Shonda Rhimes, Gigi Hadid, Erik Larsen… these celebrities are part of the growing list of people leaving Twitter after Elon Musk took over last week as owner. There are fears of an increase in hate speech on the platform since the $44 billion purchase was concluded, as well as the mass dismissal of staff of the company in the last couple of days. Many Twitter users are switching to Mastodon, an alternative to Twitter.

Decentralized social media platform

Mastodon was launched in 2016 as a ‘viable alternative to Twitter’. Named after an extinct relative of mammoths and elephants, Mastodon markets itself as a ‘free, open sourced decentralized social media platform’. Although its interface is very similar to that of Twitter, the two platforms are distinctively different.

Mastodon’s open source means individuals and groups can create their own version known as a server without any regulation or moderation, New York Times explains. Being run as a non-profit Mastodon is supported through crowdfunding is both free to use and free of ads.

How to join

Since Musk assumed ownership of Twitter on October 27, Mastodon gained 230,000 users, pushing its monthly active users to 655,000, the software developer who created it, Eugen Rochko, disclosed in an interview last Thursday.

It is not as large as Twitter, obviously, but it is the biggest that this network has ever been.

So how does it work in practice? According to technology editor at BBC, Zoe Kleinman who’s on one of the servers, the first thing you do when you sign up is to choose a server. These servers are themed - many by country, city or interest - like UK, social, technology, gaming and so on.

Any server you choose becomes your starting community and from there, you can follow users on other servers. It won’t suggest people for you to follow, but you can search for other servers that might be of interest using hashtags. There is a downside to Mastodon’s open source approach, Kleinman found:

the downside of this is that you are instead at the whim of the person or organisation running your server - if they decide to abandon it, you lose your account. Mastodon is asking server owners to give their users three months notice if they decide to close it.

Sources used:

New York Times: What Is Mastodon and Why Are People Leaving Twitter for It?

BBC: Twitter users jump to Mastodon - but what is it?

CNN: With Twitter in chaos, Mastodon is on fire