The home page of the Mastodon app appears displayed on a mobile phone screen.
Photo illustration by Davide Bonaldo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
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Photo illustration by Davide Bonaldo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The home page of the Mastodon app appears displayed on a mobile phone screen.
Photo illustration by Davide Bonaldo/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Few people outside of computer programmers or engineers had heard of the social network Mastodon before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Now, Twitter users concerned about the changes the eccentric billionaire is making are signing up to Mastodon’s accounts in droves. Mastodon hit one million users earlier this week, up from under 400,000 before Musk closed the deal with Twitter on October 27.
The rise in popularity has surprised even Eugen Rochko, who founded Mastodon in 2016.
“What I’ve always wanted to try to overcome as a barrier is the idea that, no, there aren’t enough people out there, so I can’t really use it. Or it’s for fools,” he said.
Now he is pulling all-nighters to meet the growing demand.
But Mastodon isn’t the most intuitive social media platform. Mastodon is open source software, meaning anyone so inclined can create a server to host users and connect to other servers, creating a decentralized network.
“No one controls the entire network,” Rochko said.
“It is, in fact, more democratic,” he asserts, because the operators of each individual server can set content standards based on the preferences of the communities they are trying to serve.
But he admits that many new users get stuck choosing which server out of thousands to join.
I once tried to explain Mastodon to my fiancee’s elderly stepfather and I think I succeeded.
John Wilker is one of the many Twitter users now looking for alternatives. He’s tried Mastodon before, among others.
“I joined a Mastodon [server] it was all about science fiction and fantasy writing. And I say, ‘That’s great. These are definitely my people!” he said. “But then no one else is there.”
Sharing with Twitter is hard to do, many users think
Wilker, who joined Twitter in 2007, credits the platform with helping launch his career as a science fiction writer. But he’s had enough of it before, like after the 2016 election, then again in 2020.
John Wilker, a science fiction author in Denver, is one of many Twitter users now looking for alternatives.
John Wilker
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John Wilker
John Wilker, a science fiction author in Denver, is one of many Twitter users now looking for alternatives.
John Wilker
“It was always going to come down the same way, OK, it feels like the report is now turning more toward heated, mean-spirited judgments about things. That’s usually when I’d start looking” for alternative social platforms, he said.
But he says it’s been difficult to replicate elsewhere the combination of community he’s built over the years on Twitter and the tools to personalize his information feed. It’s not for lack of trying. He said he signs up for most of the new social networking sites that come along, but he keeps coming back to Twitter.
Twitter is more than a social network, says Karen North, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
“People come to Twitter because they want to be part of a community of people gathering information and opinions,” she said. “It’s really a place where journalists go to get a headline, get a quote from a source, build their stories and talk to their audience.”
But that is changing. Just before Election Day, the Associated Press warned its reporters to consider Twitter and other social media platforms “also functioning as information warfare arenas” and to approach all posts with skepticism.
Twitter, under Musk, has overhauled its system of marking verified accounts with blue ticks. Now, some blue ticks still indicate that the company has confirmed a user’s identity. Other blue ticks simply mean the user has a monthly subscription, leading to mass confusion.
Meredith Clarke, a communications professor at Northeastern University, is writing a book about Black Twitter. She sticks to Twitter because it is central to her research. But she knows users looking around for options feel torn about leaving. While the most popular social networks like Facebook and TikTok serve some of the same needs as Twitter, they are not the same.
“No other social networking platform has the same tools that make it possible to connect the way Twitter does,” she said.
Even before Musk took over, she said, Twitter didn’t do a good job of protecting Black and other marginalized users. She worries it will get worse for them under Musk, who is known for his hostility and trolling of those who disagree with him.
“The question is whether they want to deal with the kind of harassment that has obviously increased in the last few days and weeks, whether they want to be there when, say, the main agent of chaos in charge, [former President Donald Trump,] allowed to return to the platform,” Clark said.
Musk has said it was wrong for Twitter to ban Trump shortly after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. At the time, the company said Trump violated its rules on inciting violence.
North, of USC, says many people will stay on Twitter simply because of the time and effort it takes to create a new community on another site. But she notes that changing user loyalties over time is also part of the evolution of social media.
Young people migrated from Facebook to Instagram, she said. “Then they got frustrated with Instagram and went to Snapchat. And before that, everyone left MySpace, and before that, everyone left Friendster. And it’s hard to remember that Friendster and MySpace even existed.”
A chance to rethink what social media can be
If a critical mass of Twitter users abandon it for Mastodon or other alternatives, it could be an opportunity for some kind of change for the social media network.
“Let’s ask, ‘What does it mean to build a purposeful social network around timely, accurate, and local knowledge?'” said Joan Donovan, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and co-author of the new book Meme Wars. . “Instead of starting from the premise of ‘We’re just going to be the pipes pushing information around the Web, and nobody’s going to be responsible for the quality.’
Donovan says imagine if we could keep the parts we love: for example, easy online community building and fun memes. And we lose the parts we hate, like misinformation, coercion, and the breathless pursuit of likes and eyeballs.
As for Wilker, the sci-fi writer, he says he’s ready for a break from his relationship with Twitter.
“We’ve definitely taken it to places that aren’t good for society or our mental well-being. So maybe we can figure out a social media that’s not as toxic or as driven by favorites,” he said.
But when it comes to leaving Twitter altogether, he says he’s thought about it. Then, he thought again.
“No, I have no plans to go anywhere. I have no plans to leave wholesale,” he said.
