In the week since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the number of people signing up for a small social network called Mastodon has skyrocketed.
You may not have heard of Mastodon, which has been around since 2016 and is now growing rapidly. Some users have left his Twitter because of this, or at least found a second place for it to post his thoughts online. As the well-known social network faces layoffs, controversial product changes, an expected change in his approach to content moderation, and a surge of hate. rhetoric.
There may be no clear alternative to Twitter, a fast-paced, text-heavy, conversational, news-centric platform with a unique impact. But Mastodon scratches a particular itch. The service has a similar look and feel to Twitter, with a timeline of simple updates ordered chronologically rather than algorithmically. Users can join different servers operated by different groups and individuals rather than a central platform controlled by a single company such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
Unlike large social networks, Mastodon is free and ad-free. It is developed by a non-profit organization led by Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko and supported by crowdfunding.
Rochko said in an interview Thursday that Mastodon has gained 230,000 users since October 27, when Musk took control of Twitter. Currently, he has 655,000 monthly active users. Twitter reported in July that it has nearly 238 million active daily monetizable users.
“It is not as large as Twitter, obviously, but it is the biggest that this network has ever been,” said Rochko, who originally created Mastodon as more of a project than a consumer product (and, yes, its name was inspired by the heavy metal band Mastodon).
Mastodon’s new signatures include well-followed Twitter users, including actress and comedian Kathy Griffin, who joined in early November, and journalist Molly Jong-Fast, who joined in late October.
Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor at UCLA and faculty director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, launched Mastodon in earnest on October 30, shortly after Musk took over Twitter. (She had created a separate account years ago, but Twitter was so popular among scientists that she wasn’t really into it until recently, she said.)
There are some important differences, especially when setting up your network. Because Mastodon user accounts are hosted on many different servers, the cost of hosting users is spread across different people and groups. But that also means that users are spread out and it’s hard to find someone you know. Rochko compared this setup with various email providers such as Gmail and his Hotmail.
For example, Mastodon requires you to join certain servers in order to sign up, some of which are open to anyone and others require an invitation (you can even run your own server). increase). There is a server run by Mastodon.social, the non-profit behind Mastodon, but it is no longer accepting users. I currently use one named Mstdn.social. This can also be used to login to access his Mastodon on the web.
You can follow all other Mastodon users regardless of which server they are logged into, but only if they follow your Mastodon friends or are followers of the same server you are logged into. You can only see the list of people your Mastodon friends are following.
Previous Post
Leave a Comment