Half a million users move to decentralized alternative Mastodon following Elon Musk Twitter grab
Amid uncertainty and criticism following Elon Musk’s takeover of social media giant Twitter, nearly half a million users have flocked to Mastodon, a decentralized alternative.
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Fast facts
Mastodon, created by the German-based non-profit Mastodon gGmbH in 2016, is an open-source network of thousands of servers that act as individual social media platforms.
The network says its monthly average users has more than doubled to 860,000 since Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk officially took over Twitter, triggering a string of controversies and news about upcoming paywalls and other changes.
Mastodon’s servers, such as mastodon.social, mastodon.online, and mstdn.social have layouts similar to Twitter, allowing users to post to news feeds using hashtags, re-posts and likes.
However, Mastodon seeks to distinguish itself from Twitter and other social media sites. The network calls itself a “social networking server that’s not for sale,” offering a platform without algorithms, ads or paywalls.
Additionally, independent organizations and individuals heading the network’s over 3,600 individual servers will be tasked with creating rules and moderation for the sites, as opposed to Twitter’s top-down approach, according to Mastodon.
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