Meet the social network that grew after Musk bought Twitter

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in late April may have sparked a run on another lesser-known, non-profit social network: Mastodon.

The platform, created in 2016, allows the publication of videos, photos and texts of up to 500 characters in a timeline that can be visited by other users, a way of functioning very similar to that of Twitter.

Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko has been publishing growth figures for his platform since April 22, a week after the internet giant’s $43 billion bid.

“The number of monthly active Mastodon users has increased by 84,597 since the Twitter purchase story was released,” he said on his own network in an April 27 post. Two days later, the new active users since the end of March were already at 176 thousand.

In all, the network has nearly 3 million users — 500,000 of whom are active. In its latest balance sheet, Twitter said it had 217 million active users.

On Google, the search for “mastodon” (in Portuguese, mastodon, a prehistoric animal of the mammoth family) peaked between the 24th and 30th of April.

Such a furor is because the purchase has divided users. The creator of the alternative platform himself said that one of the things that motivated him to look at decentralized media in 2016 was “the rumor that a controversial billionaire could buy Twitter”.

Musk, who describes himself as a free speech absolutist, plans to take Twitter private to implement the changes he wants, which include reviewing content moderation policies.

In Brazil, while bolsonaristas celebrated the purchase and gained thousands of followers — a phenomenon seen as inauthentic by analysts — critics of Musk lamented the news and considered abandoning the platform.

Although the networks are similar, there are two differences that may have weighed on the choice of new users: Mastodon is federated and written in open source.

Because it is open source, everyone can see and download the website’s “recipe”, that is, the instructions that make the social network what it is. Being federated means that the platform shares part of the code with other social networks that are also federated, ensuring communication between them.

In practice, when registering, the user must choose a server — a service that maintains a website on the air. Your username is linked to that group, called an “instance”. They are kinds of thematic communities (Brazilian, LGBT or liberal, for example) created by moderators who want to open a space for debate.

Each instance has its own rules, that is, the user has more power on the network. Masto.donte.com.br, for example, a Brazilian community, vetoes prejudiced speeches, violent language, apology for totalitarian governments and intentional disinformation.

“I met Mastodon back in April 2017, during one of the Twitter crises”, says Renato Cerqueira, one of the founders of the instance. “At the time, I was leaving Facebook for disagreeing with the handling of data.”

In his opinion, the fact of being federated changes the user’s relationship with the network. Most servers, he says, are smaller, which facilitates the work of the coordinators of the instances and gives more agility in the responses.

“Moderation is closer and problems tend to be resolved faster,” he says. “For the same reason, it’s easier to isolate problematic servers. Far-right servers, for example, exist, but they are banned by most federation servers and are isolated in a bubble of their own.”

Open source also allows other types of instance customization. Some of them block the sending of messages to users in other instances, or allow the editing of texts in bold or italics, for example.

In recent days, Mastodon has been slow after the increase in hits. “Again, I’m working on fixing this. Please be patient,” stated Eugen Rochko on his creation.