In the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, people are leaving the app in droves and joining an alternative, decentralized social media platform: Mastodon, an open-source project that bills itself as ‘not for sale.’
Like Twitter, Mastodon users can post short messages that will appear on a timeline. However, unlike Twitter, users have to select a server based on their interests upon signing up for the app. Servers are based on a wide-range of topics, languages, and categories, like music, gaming, activism, and more.
On the day Musk took the reins at Twitter, Mastodon gained 70K new users alone. Since then, it’s grown to 655K users. Of course, change is hard. Because Mastodon operates a bit differently than Twitter, early reviews are mixed so far.
Though it’s only now gaining traction, Mastodon is about six years old and was started by Eugen Rochko, a disillusioned former Twitter user.
Only time will tell if Mastodon will be able to keep the momentum going, but if the mass layoffs and rapidly fleeing advertisers are any indicators, it seems like Twitter’s future could very well be shaky.