Understand how Mastodon, Elon Musk’s alternative Twitter network works

If you’ve heard the word “mastodon” a lot since Elon Musk took over Twitter in late October, here’s why: the extinct mammal is also the name of a relatively small and little-known social network that has skyrocketed in popularity, so many Twitter users experience it as an alternative to connecting with others online.

Mastodon allows users to join many different servers run by countless groups and individuals, rather than a central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. While all these social networks are free, Mastodon is also ad-free. It is developed by a non-profit organization run by Eugen Rochko, who created Mastodon in 2016, and is supported by crowdfunding as well as individuals and groups that operate servers.

Users have been fleeing Twitter for this in recent days, or at least looking for a second place to post their thoughts online, as the much better-known social network faces layoffs, controversial product changes, an expected shift in its approach to moderation. content and a leap into hateful rhetoric.

In a Mastodon post late Sunday, Rochko said the social network had gained 489,000 users in less than two weeks and now has more than one million active monthly users. (For perspective, Twitter reported in July that it had nearly 238 million daily active monetizable users.)

“This is really cool,” Rochko said of the milestone.

I’m one of those newcomers to Mastodon, trying it out of curiosity and because Twitter has become more and more toxic over time. In my corner of the decentralized social network, there’s been a frantic, almost party vibe for days now as more people arrive and longtime users offer tips and answer questions. It’s fun and energizing and, frankly, feels a lot like the early days of Twitter.

But while it can be exciting to look for a new social network, it can also be tricky. Mastodon and Twitter have some similarities, but they are quite different – ​​both in how they work and how they are operated. If you’re interested in getting off Twitter or just want to check out something new, read on to find out how to sign up and thrive with Mastodon.

Things are the same, but also very different

Many of Mastodon’s features and layout — particularly in its iOS and Android apps — will feel familiar to current Twitter users, albeit with slightly different wording. You can follow other people, create short posts — there’s a 500-character limit and you can upload images and videos —, favorite or repost other users’ posts, and so on.

Mastodon is quite different, and the sign-up process in particular can attract new users. That’s because it’s not as simple as opening an app or web page and setting up a username and password — you also need to choose a server where your Mastodon account will live.

First, don’t panic: no technical knowledge is required to sign up, but you will have to follow a few steps to create your account and you may have to be patient as the influx of new users is overloading many servers.

Go to this web page and if you want to get started quickly, click on the little dropdown menu that says “signup speed” and set it to “instant” to see the servers you can sign up with right away.

Then choose a server. There are general interest servers such as mastodon.world; regional servers like sfba.social, aimed at people in the San Francisco Bay Area; and multi-interest ones too (many servers review new applications before approving them — such as asking potential users why they want to join — so you might have to wait if you want to join any particular ones).

You’ll also need to decide how you want to access Mastodon — on a smartphone I’d suggest trying the iOS or Android app, but there are plenty of other free and paid apps too that will do the trick. On the web, I can access Mastodon through the server I am registered with.

Meet friends

For me, one of the trickiest aspects of joining Mastodon was finding people I know and finding people I wanted to follow. In part, this is because there are no algorithmically generated suggestions of who to follow, there is no scanning of your contacts for people you know, and you may not know which people you follow on other social media networks that are already using Mastodon — or as they are identified, if they are already there.

Similar to Twitter, you can use hashtags on Mastodon to search for topics and people (“#TwitterMigration” is currently popular for newcomers). There are also some tools you can use to find Twitter friends on Mastodon, such as Twitodon. For the most part, I’ve taken the more manual route by searching Twitter for the word “Mastodon” to access people I follow who have added Mastodon usernames to their Twitter profile names.

As my real and virtual friends show up on Mastodon, I’m tempted to see who they’re following, or who’s following them, but that can be tricky. You can follow any other Mastodon user, no matter which server they signed up to, but in general, you can only easily see people your friends follow or are followed if those people use the same server as you — if you follow someone whose account is hosted on your server will also be able to see a complete list of people who follow and are followed. Rochko told me that he is thinking about how to improve this experience.

Once you’ve established yourself with a server and a handful of people to follow, you’ll want to start reading others’ posts and posting yourself. You will quickly notice many subtle differences from Twitter. For example, user updates are sorted chronologically, rather than algorithmically, as on Twitter and many other social networks.

There’s also no Mastodon equivalent to Twitter’s quote tweet feature, where you can repost another user’s post and attach your own thoughts to it. The closest you can get is to copy and paste a link from a user’s post into a new post and add your own comments — although anyone who sees your post will have to click that link if they want to understand what you’re talking about.

These differences aren’t bad, and some of them can be really good; this can make posting on Mastodon seem a little less reactive than posting on Twitter, which is great for anyone prone to getting annoyed by other people’s social media posts. And many of the people who try Mastodon seem ready for a change.