Open-source, decentralized and ad-free, Mastodon presents itself as the best alternative to Twitter when we don’t really know what will become of the social network.
The takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk for 44 billion dollars has some users fearing that the platform will evolve in a direction that does not suit them. The entrepreneur at the head of Tesla and SpaceX has announced that he wants to make the social network a space for total freedom of expression, implying more flexible conditions of use and less moderation.
Mastodon takes advantage of low trust in Twitter
We see that Internet users are already looking for an alternative to Twitter, and it is Mastodon that is doing well for now. The social network gained 141,000 active users during the week of April 25 to 29, and 176,000 for the whole month.
Mastodon, which has been compared to Twitter, is gaining popularity among both regular social media users and celebrities, but not everyone is familiar with how it operates and how to get verified on mastodon.
The number of downloads of the application on Android and iOS has exploded and the enthusiasm has even won over the institutions: the European Union has announced that it is launching Mastodon.
A gain in popularity which is not without consequences for the technical infrastructure of the service, which was not ready to receive this influx of new visitors. Registrations to the two public servers mastodon.social and mastodon.online, maintained by the organization, can be difficult at this time.
A decentralized platform
Founded in 2016, Mastodon is an open-source platform that presents itself as a decentralized social network. In its interface and functionality, Mastodon is very similar to Twitter. But its operation is very different since it is not centralized: a user can create his own Mastodon server for example, which will not prevent him from communicating with users from another instance. Mastodon is also ad-free and claims to respect the privacy of its users, further arguments in its favor.
In a blog post, Eugen Rochko, a German behind the Mastodon project, laughs at the current situation.
” One of the reasons I started getting into decentralized social media in 2016, which eventually led me to found Mastodon, was rumors that Twitter, the platform I’d used daily for years , could be sold to another controversial billionaire. […] And now it finally happened, and for the same reasons many people come to Mastodon. »
Will you give Mastodon a try or stick with Twitter?
Sources: Engadget, Mastodon