With Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter comes several potential changes to the social media platform, including a charge for verification, paywalling videos and half of the company being laid off with little notice. Users have been leaving the platform in droves, with some finding their way to the decentralized social network “Mastodon.”
What is Mastodon?
The format of Mastodon is remarkably similar to Twitter and other social networking platforms, as users are able to create and share posts, as well as “follow” others through the service. Bookmarks and “favs’’ on posts are akin to saves and likes, according to Gizmodo. There is some variation in the platform’s lingo, such as swapping “tweets” for “toots,” but the two services share very similar modus operandi. What sets Mastodon apart — and why users are migrating to it — is its ownership.
Mastodon is decentralized, meaning there is no single corporate entity that owns and runs the service. Each Mastodon “instance” is operated by the creator of the server it runs on, with its rules also being dictated by each creator. Users are still able to interact across servers, but can join and leave instances as they please. This flexibility allows server owners to respond to the needs of its users, according to the official Mastodon website. You can “join a server with the rules you agree with, or host your own.”
A Twitter post from Mastodon claims that over 230,000 users have moved to Mastodon in the past week, with 650,000 users total. The app still hosts only a fraction of Twitter’s users, however, as Business of Apps reported that 237 million people still actively use Twitter.
Are Twitter users leaving?
Users appear to be split on how to respond to Musk acquiring Twitter, as the hashtag #IWasGoingToQuitTwitterBut has appeared alongside #TwitterMigration. The discourse that has followed the change in command has pushed verified Twitter users — whose following may be rooted in the platform — to either abandon the social networking service or choose to stick with it.
Many users have outright jumped ship, or at least moved away from Twitter. Artist and actress Sara Bareilles posted on Twitter for what may be the last time last month, saying, “Welp. It’s been fun Twitter. I’m out. See you on other platforms, peeps. Sorry, this one’s just not for me.”
Then there are those like actor George Takei, who plan to stay on the platform as a form of protest.
“I’m not going anywhere. Should this place become more toxic, I pledge to strive even harder to lift up reason, science, compassion and the rule of law,” Takei wrote on Twitter. “The struggle against fascism, misinformation, and hate requires tough fighters. I hope you stay in the fight, right beside me.”
Plenty is still up in the air, however. Shifts in the active user population is nothing new for Twitter or other social media platforms, as The Atlantic reported that a similar movement, #DeleteFacebook, followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal against Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg in 2018. An official 2021 Meta yearly report claimed that the website still had roughly 2 billion daily active users, despite the online movement.