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.

Two things that are back on Twitter

After a months-long effort, Elon Musk finally took over ownership and control of the Twitter social networking platform last week. Now, many Democratic Twitter users are concerned about what Musk will do with the influential platform. That is because Musk is not only the world’s richest person, he has also become a full-blown MAGA Republican. In May, Musk announced that he was switching from voting Democratic to Republican, because, according to him, Democrats “have become the party of division & hate.” He also refers to Democratic and progressive values as “the woke mind virus.”

True to his conservative political colors, Musk has already taken some initial steps to turn Twitter into more of a right wing hate fest, including firing the executive in charge of Twitter’s content moderation policy, and reportedly planning to allow Donald Trump and Kanye (Ye) West back on the platform to spew their divisive lies. Not surprisingly, on the first day that Musk took over, there was a reported flood of racist tweets, including Nazi memes and a massive increase in use of the N-word, on the platform. Thus, the obvious question becomes: what should Democratic and other good Twitter users do in response?