What is Mastodon? What is Fediverse? How to register, what to know
- Some Twitter users have left or at least talked about leaving after Elon Musk took over.
- Mastodon emerged as an alternative.
- As of the end of October, the site has gained more than one million users.
After Elon Musk’s takeover of the social network, Twitter is in tenth place. Recently, hundreds of employees reportedly quit their jobs on Thursday in response to Musk’s ultimatum.
This comes days after Musk suspended the network’s paid verification scheme after being inundated with fake accounts.
Some users – potentially more than 1.3 million – have defected – while many others have been discussing the possibility of being diverted to alternative online communities.
The devastation on Twitter Thursday night left many users saying goodbye and giving up on other online communication options.
A new online joint that has emerged as a destination for the deranged on Twitter: Mastodon.
That social network, which has added more than 1 million new users since Oct. 27, now hosts 1.9 million monthly active users, according to Mastodon’s website.
By comparison, Twitter had more than 237 million daily active users in the June 30 quarter, the company said in July. Users increased by 16.6% compared to a year ago.
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What is Mastodon? What is Fediverse?
Mastodon describes itself as “the largest decentralized social network on the Internet.” what do you mean? Mastodon, a non-profit operation, is built on open source software and resides on Fediverse, a “federated universe,” of online applications and websites connected by thousands of independent servers. There are currently around 5,700 Mastodon servers on FedEx.
So, unlike connecting to a platform in the case of Twitter, when you connect to Mastodon you first connect to one of these servers. The servers, called “templates”, can be owned by a person or a group and each can have their own rules for joining and how content is edited.
“Some servers allow anyone to join, while others are invite-only or require permission from an administrator,” TechCrunch culture writer Amanda Silberling explained in a primer on the forum. “For example, the Professional Scientists server requires applicants to include a link to their research to demonstrate that they are indeed experts.”
Once you’re on a server, you can view posts and messages from anyone across Mastodon’s servers.
“Just like you would email someone from your Gmail account from Outlook…or any other email provider, as long as you know their email address, you can email or message anyone on any website using their (Mastodon) address,” says the Join Mastodon information page.
Mastodon’s main Twitter account answers questions from new and potential users Posted on Twitter on November 6: “Mastodon Server is an ISP for a global social network that is not a person or organization.”
Where did the Mastodon come from? How did it start?
Founder and CEO Eugen Rocco started developing Mastodon in 2016 while at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany, recently told Forbes.
Around that time, there were rumors of a takeover of Twitter by Peter Thiel, who along with Musk helped create PayPal.
“A right-wing billionaire was going to buy a public utility that was not known to the public,” Rochko told Reuters earlier this year.
“It’s important to have this global communication platform where you can find out what’s going on in the world and discuss it with your friends. Why is it controlled by one company?” He told the outlet.
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Why is Mastodon a Twitter alternative?
Rochko was a “loving” Twitter user of Mastodon’s website. But he was “dissatisfied with Twitter, with the company and with the platform” about how it was changing, he told Forbes.
That fueled the development of Rochko Mastodon, which launched in 2017. “It made me realize that the means of expressing my thoughts on the Internet is too important to get into the hands of a corporation,” he told Forbes.
Mastodon has some Twitter features like following other users and groups, sharing photos, video and audio, using hashtags and promoting your favorite posts. You can also edit your posts. (Once you’re at Mastodon, feel free to follow me by searching @mikesnider@mstdn.party.)
But Mastodon doesn’t work like Twitter and may be difficult for newcomers to understand. “It’s not designed for a massive global audience like Twitter,” writes TechCrunch’s Silberling. That may change over time as more developers join the project under Twitter’s control.
And, since Mastodon is a non-profit organization that isn’t owned by a for-profit organization like Facebook, it “doesn’t work as well,” she says. “In recent days, service has been slow at times, if not completely stopped, as servers adjust to the influx of new users.”
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How to create a Mastodon account?
Go to joinmastodon.org/ on your computer or download the Android or iOS app for Mastodon. You will need an email address and create a username and password.
Then search for the server you want to use as your home server by region and title (you can change it at any time). Think of it as your “home room server,” suggests USA Today technology columnist Jennifer Jolly.
Some examples include “mastodon.social”, a generic group, or something like “metalhead.club” which describes itself as “focused on metal music content, hosted in Germany and powered by 100% green energy”.
Note: Some servers have temporarily stopped adding new members due to overloading with demand. Others, such as “newsie.social,” a site for journalists and news enthusiasts, require membership. (In my case, mastodon.social wasn’t accepting new members and newsie.social didn’t respond to my request, so I joined the mastodon.party server, which responded fairly quickly with a confirmation email.)
In his guide to Mastodon, CNET writer Peter Butler points out that there’s an online directory to help recommend a server — à la the Hogwarts magic sorting hat in the Harry Potter books and movies.
Once you’re on Mastodon, Jolie suggests using a site like Tweetodon to find Twitter friends who are now on Mastodon.
Comment:With Elon Musk screwing up Twitter, it’s time to go back to drooling on street corners.
What is different from it?
When you go Mastodon, it takes a while to get your bearings. When you comment, you “post” instead of “tweet.” Previously, one comment was known as “toot,” but the software update includes a name change, Gizmodo reported Tuesday.
Posts can have up to 500 characters and you can message others by posting their usernames. You can see more timelines — similar to how Tweetdeck offers multiple Twitter timelines — by selecting “Advanced View” in your Mastodon preferences, Butler notes.
Mastodon is not bombarded by post waves and there are no ads. But you have to put in a little more effort to use the platform than Twitter.
Get used to it because there are no plans to make Mastodon like Twitter just to please newcomers, Rochko said in a recent interview with Wired. “I’m listening, but I’m not interested in jumping on new feature requests,” he said. “We have our own plans and strategies and our understanding of what Mastodon is.”
This is not a new attitude for Rochko. “People who have been joining us over the years have always called Twitter ‘a place from hell,'” he told Forbes. “The solution is not a copy of Twitter without Elon Musk. The solution is a different example of social media.
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
