Mastodon has seen massive growth after people left Twitter when Musk took over.
Moving to Mastodon
There’s too much drama going on Twitter since Elon Musk took the crown. He cut the company’s workforce in half.
He also ended Twitter’s blue verification system. As he reshapes this high-profile social network, Musk ended up fighting with users over jokes.
Musk warned that Twitter might not thrive if he can’t find a way to bring revenue from subscriptions. The drama on Twitter has caused a lot of users to vamoose.
Those who left the blue bird platform are flocking to new Twitter alternates. One of them is Mastodon.
What is Mastodon?
It has emerged as a great alternative for those who don’t want to read Musk’s tweets. It is a prime candidate for individuals who are looking for life beyond Twitter.
Mastodon has similarities with Twitter. Its tweets are called “toots.”
This social media platform is not owned by a single company. Rather, it is a network of servers. Each server is run independently. But they all connect so that people who are on different servers can communicate.
Unlike Twitter, you can’t find ads on Mastodon. The reason for this is that it gets its funding through grants, donations, etc.
The feed is chronological. Thus, it doesn’t work like TikTok which uses algorithms to ensure you spend as much time on the app as possible.
Signing up may not be straightforward because the servers are run separately. Thus, you must pick one server that you wish to join.
But there are tons of servers available. This makes it difficult to find the server you wish to join. Then, if there are a lot of people looking for servers, it causes a huge waitlist. The rules of the servers are also not easy to find.
You should agree to the server’s rules to be granted access. Once you have an account, you’ll realize that the feed is similar to Twitter. You can post photos and write up to 500 character toots.
The site has over 1 million users. Half of them signed up after Musk took over the blue bird platform.
Although Mastodon is enjoying a growing user base because of the Twitter exodus, users must be ready for membership fees to be paid for maintaining servers. Soon, users will see promotional ads to cover server hosting costs.
On the other hand, if you don’t like Mastodon because it reminds you so much of Twitter, you can sign up for an account with Counter Social. It’s also ad-free. But you can’t access it if you’re from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan. Currently, it has over 63 million users.
Another option is Tumblr. This isn’t new social networking. The site is known for its devoted fan base. When it banned porn in 2018, many users were furious. Unfortunately, most of its online presence is made up of adult content. Thus, when it was outlawed, a large group of users also left.
There’s no perfect replacement for the blue bird platform. But if you simply want to stay up to date with international and local news, you can just choose Apple or Google news. You can also use Flipboard or Social Barrel.
