CNN business
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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, but is growing rapidly now.Some are fleeing Twitter for that, or at least looking for a second place Post your thoughts online as By far the most prominent social network has seen layoffs, controversial product changes, expected changes in its approach to content moderation, and A jump of hateful rhetoric.
There may not be a clear alternative to Twitter. Twitter is a fast-moving, text-heavy, conversational and news-oriented platform with a unique impact. But Mastodon scratches a particular itch. The service looks similar to Twitter, with short update timelines ordered chronologically rather than algorithmically. Instead of his one central platform managed by a single company such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the user can participate in various servers run by different groups and individuals.
Unlike large social networks, Mastodon is free to use and has no ads. It is developed by a non-profit run by Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko and is 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, there are 655,000 monthly active his users. Twitter reported in July that it has nearly 238 million daily active monetizable users.
“Although obviously not as big as Twitter, this network is the biggest ever (heavy metal band Mastodon).
Mastodon sign-ups include some Twitter users with large followings, such as actors and comedians Cathy GriffinA journalist who joined the company in early November Molly John Fastjoined the company in late October.
Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor at UCLA and faculty director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, began using Mastodon in earnest on October 30, shortly after Musk took over Twitter. (She had created a separate account years ago, but didn’t take it seriously until recently, she said, because of Twitter’s growing popularity among those in academia.)
Roberts, who left UCLA earlier this year to work as a researcher at Twitter, began using Mastodon out of concern about how Twitter’s content moderation would change under Musk’s control. said. Some newcomers, she suspects, are fed up with social media companies that collect tons of user data and are driven by advertising.
She also pointed out that Twitter users in particular may migrate to Mastodon because the user experience is very similar to that of Twitter. Many of Mastodon’s features and layouts (especially her iOS app) are familiar to her current Twitter users, although there are some minor wording differences. You can follow other users, create short posts (500 character limit, you can upload images and videos), favorite and repost other users’ posts.
“It’s as close as it gets,” she said.
I’ve been on Twitter since 2007, and it got me wondering how many people I follow on the social network started posting Mastodon usernames in the last few weeks. This week I decided to check out Mastodon for myself.
There are some important differences, especially in how the network is set up. Because Mastodon user accounts are hosted on many different servers, the cost of hosting users is spread across different people and groups. But this also means that users are scattered all over the place, and it can be difficult to find someone you know. Rochko likened this setup to having different email providers such as Gmail and Hotmail.
While this means that the entire network is not under the control of any one person or company, it introduces some new complexities for those of us used to Twitter. Services such as Facebook and Instagram.
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 doesn’t accept any more users. I currently use one named Mstdn.social. This is also where you can sign in to access his Mastodon on the web.
You can also follow all other Mastodon users, but only if they follow your Mastodon friends or are followed by your Mastodon friends, regardless of which server they are signed up on. You can only see the list of users with Servers signing up (I noticed this when trying to track more people who know people who signed up recently).
At first, in some ways, I felt like I was starting over as a complete newcomer to social media. As Roberts says, he looks and works a lot like Twitter, and the iOS app is easy to use.
But unlike Twitter, where I can easily interact with a large audience, my Mastodon network has less than 100 followers. All of a sudden I don’t know what to post — Twitter never pesters me. Perhaps because the size of that network makes it feel like any post doesn’t matter all that much. But I quickly got over it and found Mastodon’s diminutive scale to be soothing compared to Twitter’s constant stream of stimulation.
However, we are not yet ready to close our Twitter account. For me, Mastodon is sort of a social media haven in case Twitter becomes unbearable.
Roberts, who has yet to decide whether to close his Twitter account, is also surprised by the rapid increase in his follower count on Mastodon. Within a week of her signing up and notifying her nearly 23,000 Twitter followers, she had over 1,000 of her Mastodon followers.
“People may soon feel like they don’t want to be seen on Twitter,” she said.
In some ways, it’s fun to start over.
“I thought, ‘What would it be like to start over?'” she asked. “It’s kind of funny. Oh, they’re here! This place is so-so! I’m so glad they’re here and we’re together.”
