Amid uncertainty and criticism following Elon Musk’s takeover of social media giant Twitter, nearly half a million users have flocked to Mastodon, a decentralized alternative.
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Fast facts
- Mastodon, created by the German-based non-profit Mastodon gGmbH in 2016, is an open-source network of thousands of servers that act as individual social media platforms.
- The network says its monthly average users has more than doubled to 860,000 since Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk officially took over Twitter, triggering a string of controversies and news about upcoming paywalls and other changes.
- Mastodon’s servers, such as mastodon.social, mastodon.online, and mstdn.social have layouts similar to Twitter, allowing users to post to news feeds using hashtags, re-posts and likes.
- However, Mastodon seeks to distinguish itself from Twitter and other social media sites. The network calls itself a “social networking server that’s not for sale,” offering a platform without algorithms, ads or paywalls.
- Additionally, independent organizations and individuals heading the network’s over 3,600 individual servers will be tasked with creating rules and moderation for the sites, as opposed to Twitter’s top-down approach, according to Mastodon.
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