A little more than a week, Elon Musk owns the social network Twitter. He has already fired employees (and then asked some of them to come back), launched an updated Twitter Blue subscription that allows you to get a blue tick for 8 bucks a month, and plans several other innovations. Not all users appreciated such changes, so they are looking for alternatives.
Existing since 2016, the Mastodon service began to gain popularity rapidly. Since October 27, 490,000 new users have joined the platform. Let’s talk about what kind of service it is.
Mastodon is an open-source, decentralized platform for running your social networks or reading existing ones. The interface and options overlap a lot with Twitter: a feed of user posts that can be commented on, liked, reposted, and shared with other users.
Its creator sets the rules for each social network. The social network can be open or, conversely, with invitation-only access.
Each social network is a separate server by interests. For example, city, country, hobbies, or anything else. Because of this, there are some peculiarities: if you registered on the Technology server and the owner decided to close it, you will lose your account. But not everything is so sad: the owner must notify the server about closing at least three months in advance so you can connect to another group.
The main problem of Mastodon social networks is moderation. It all depends on the owner of the server: there may be strict restrictions, or there may be absolute permissiveness. Therefore, if you do not want to run into insults, it is better to study the server’s rules before connecting to it.
What do you think of the Mastodon concept? What do you think about the innovations in Twitter? Share your opinion in the comments.