Mastodon: meet the social network that rivals Twitter

The billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, has just bought one of the largest social networks in the world, Twitter, which may have generated a race to a lesser-known social network: Mastodon. The platform was created in 2015 and allows users to publish videos, photos and texts of up to 500 characters, and is open to visits by other users. As a result, Eugen Rochko, founder and CEO of Mastodon, has been releasing his platform's growth figures since April 22nd, exactly seven days after Twitter's sale.

"The number of monthly active users of Mastodon has increased by 84,597 since the Twitter acquisition story broke," said the CEO in his own network, on April 27th. After 48 hours of publication, your social network gained over 176,000 users. The platform has a total of approximately 3 million users, 500,000 of which are active. Twitter has more than 217 million active users.

Google reported that between April 24th and 25th, the search for “Mastodon” had a peak. The Twitter sale sparked excitement on social media. The owner and creator of Mastodon said that one of the reasons that made him leave traditional social networks in 2016 was “the rumor that a controversial billionaire might buy Twitter”. In this way, Elon Musk, who says in his interviews that he is a defender of absolute freedom of expression, has in his plans close the capital of the social network to implement the changes it plans, mainly in the moderation policies of content.

Although Twitter and Mastodon are similar, there are two differences that weigh on the choice of potential new users: Mastodon is federated and written in open source. This means that everyone can see the way the platform was created and copy it. Already federated, it means that the platform shares a portion of the code with other social networks, which facilitates dialogue between them.

When registering on Mastodon, the user will choose a server, and his username will be linked to that group, known as "instance", which are communities of specific themes, created by people who have an interest in that theme. One instance, one specific rule, that is, the user has more skills within the network. “I met Mastodon around April 2017, during one of the Twitter crises”, says Renato Cerqueira, one of the founders of an instance. “At the time, I was leaving Facebook because I disagreed with data processing.”

In Renato's opinion, as it is federated, the user's relationship with the platform is altered. Most servers are small, which makes it easier for instance creators to work. “Moderation is closer and problems tend to be resolved more quickly,” he says. “For the same reason, it's easier to isolate problem servers. Extreme right-wing servers, for example, exist, but they are banned by most federation servers and are isolated in a bubble of their own.”

Finally, open source means that other customization modes are also open. Some block the sending of messages to other users of different instances, or allow text editing to be carried out in bold or italics. Thus, Mastodon has been slower due to the increase in accesses. “Again, I'm working on fixing this. Please be patient,” Eugen said.

Geographer and pseudo writer (or otherwise), I'm 23 years old, from Rio Grande do Sul, lover of the seventh art and everything that involves communication.