The fast-growing Mastodon platform
A month ago, we pondered “What should Democratic Twitter users do now that Elon Musk has taken over?” The three main choices seemed to be: Cut and Run, Stay and Fight, and Wait and See. We chose Wait and See. Well, we have waited and we have seen. What we’ve seen is that, in those few weeks, Musk has wrecked Twitter. Most troublesome is that Musk let banned Nazis and other extremists, including Donald Trump, back on the site. Some of these extremists reportedly have been banned for the past 10 years or so. At the same time, Musk got rid of thousands of Twitter content moderators who monitor hate speech, and is reportedly purging left-leaning accounts. Moreover, Musk himself posts one right wing, intolerant screed after another on his platform, even attacking alarmed advertisers who have paused their support of the site. The result is that, counter to Musk’s promises about a free exchange of ideas, Twitter is becoming another bubble of right wing hate and misinformation, similar to Parler and “Truth” Social. Therefore, Messaging Matters is checking out of Twitter.
So where did we end up? After setting up placeholder accounts at Tribel, Counter and Mastodon, we have joined millions of others on Mastodon. Our page can be found @MessagingMatters@mstdn.social. Thus far, the experience has been completely positive. Mastodon has surpassed eight million users, and is growing at the rate of 1.5 million new users per month. It is free of ads, and, better still, free of Nazis and other hate speech purveyors. The users have been polite, and even juvenile name-calling (of the type Musk keeps engaging in on Twitter) is noticeably absent.
Others can better explain the ownership, operation and technology behind Mastodon. For example, according to TechCrunch:
Mastodon was founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko. Unlike Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any other popular social media site, Mastodon is a nonprofit, meaning that, ideally, its goal is to benefit the public, rather than shareholders.
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The service is decentralized (no, not in a blockchain way), describing itself as a “federated network which operates in a similar way to email.”
When you first create your account, you choose a server — similar to how you choose to open an email account on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or wherever — which generates your profile’s address. So, for example, if you sign up for Mastodon via the climate justice server, then your address will be @[your username]@climatejustice.social. But no matter which server you sign up with, you will be able to communicate with users from any other server, just like how Gmail users email Hotmail users and vice versa.
A big concern for many people who are leaving Twitter for Mastodon is, how can I find my Twitter connections at the new site, if they have accounts there? Thankfully, a new tool called movetodon identifies one’s Twitter follows who have moved to Mastodon, and their new Mastodon names, so long as such users include their Mastodon name in their Twitter profile, as Messaging Matters and many others have done. (Note: Messaging Matters has no relationship with movetodon, other than that we have used it successfully and can therefore recommend it.)
As for who is left at Twitter, many users have done what Messaging Matters has done thus far: they haven’t yet deleted their Twitter account (that will happen soon), but they are ignoring the toxic bird site. And we are happier as a result.
Photo by Wesley Fryer, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/ybR6Cq
