A week after billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter, social network Mastodon is gaining popularity. Here are six things you should know about this platform, which has more than 230,000 people registered in the past few days.
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A format similar to Twitter
Mastodon presents itself as a Twitter-like microblogging platform. You can post 500-character messages, photos, polls, videos, and follow other users.
On the platform launched in 2016, the equivalent of a tweet is a toot and a retweet is a boost.
A “decentralized” social network
The platform consists of several independent servers, but they can interact with each other – instead of being in the hands of one company – making it a “decentralized” social network.
“The funny thing is that one of the reasons I started looking into decentralized social networks in 2016, and which eventually led me to start Mastodon, was the rumor that Twitter, the platform I used daily for years, could be sold to another controversial billionaire,” wrote Eugen Rochko, the German computer scientist who launched Mastodon, in a press release published last April.
At Mastodon, we present a vision of social media that no billionaire can buy and own. Your ability to communicate online should not be left to the whims of a single commercial enterprise!
– Mastodon (@joinmastodon) April 14, 2022
Thousands of different servers
There are currently more than 2500 servers, also called instances. The most popular: mastodon.social, created by Eugen Rochko, but also mastodon.online and mstdn.social, according to the Washington Post.
Here is a list of servers.
While anyone can technically create a server, there are a few rules that must be followed in order for it to be approved by Mastodon. For example, the server manager must perform daily backups, at least one other person must have access to the server infrastructure, and users must be given at least three months’ notice in the event of a server shutdown.
Similar to Hotmail and Gmail
In an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, Eugen Rochko compared how Mastodon works with Gmail and Hotmail. These are hosted and controlled independently, but users of both email services can communicate with each other.
According to its founder, this structure reduces the operating costs of the social network. He also considers Mastodon to be a non-profit organization.
Some people ask us why Mastodon is not a single website. A single website that can serve the entire world requires so much computing power, infrastructure and technology that it is practically impossible to do without large capital and monetization.
– Mastodon (@joinmastodon) October 31, 2022
“People ask us why Mastodon isn’t a single website. A single website that can be used anywhere in the world requires such computing power, infrastructure and engineering that it is virtually impossible to go without significant capital and monetization,” he told UK media The Guardian.
Because of its format, Mastodon does not run ads.
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Once registered, how does it work?
After creating an account, you must always connect to the same server, which has its unique web address. The server name is part of the chosen username. However, it is possible to move your profile to another server.
The identifier follows this form: @yourname@servername
With kind approval
Mastodon’s interface is divided into several columns and is similar to TweetDeck, the application that allows you to manage and consult multiple Twitter accounts at the same time.
The toots of people who are on the same server as you scroll through your newsfeed in chronological order. You can also interact with users from other servers.
With kind approval
On Mastodon, your toots can be public (visible to everyone), private (visible only to your followers), direct (sent directly to one or more people identified in the toot), or unlisted (only for the people mentioned and those who browse your site ) his profile).
Personalized moderation
All Mastodon servers have no moderation rules.
However, each server – or community – can set its own rules. A person who creates a server must also agree to provide “active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia”, we can read on the Mastodon website.
Over 655,000 active users
Since the Tesla and SpaceX founder took over Twitter, more than 230,000 people have registered on the platform, according to the social network on its Twitter account.
Thanks to these newcomers (and ghosts), the social network would have 655,000 active users.
The number of people who switched to #Mastodon It surpassed 230,000 in the last week alone, along with many returning accounts, taking the network to over 655,000 active users, the highest ever!
Why? 👉 https://t.co/9Ik30hT3xR
– Mastodon (@joinmastodon) November 3, 2022