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Mastodon: A good alternative to Twitter?

Now that Elon Musk is the new head of Twitter, users of the popular short message service fear a radicalization of the platform. Many are even looking around for an alternative. Could Mastodon fill the gap left by the “old” Twitter?

Goodbye Twitter! Hello Mastodon?

It’s official, Elon Musk is the CEO of Twitter, effective immediately. After the Tesla CEO announced his intentions to buy Twitter back in April of this year, there was a lot of back and forth. In the summer, the purchase was even on the back burner, as the tech billionaire officially announced he was resigning from the purchase. When Twitter then threatened legal action, Musk allowed himself to be persuaded once again, so to speak, and then finalized the deal. Real joy actually triggers with nobody. The Twitter workforce is now threatened with a massive wave of layoffs. If Musk sticks to his plans, 75 percent of the employees will be laid off. At most, the bosses are likely to be happy in view of a payment sum of a proud 44 billion US dollars. But it is primarily Twitter’s users who are incensed.

After all, it can be assumed that Elon Musk will now follow his words with action and ensure more “freedom of speech” in the social network. What he means by freedom of speech, however, also includes more than questionable, sometimes inflammatory and conspiracy-theory tweets. Among other things, these caused former U.S. President Donald Trump to lose his account. Along with his profile, Twitter also deleted thousands of other profiles last year. Since the healthy filter on Twitter may now have come to an end, many active users are currently saying goodbye to the social network. But where will they post their short messages in the future? An unofficial Twitter successor has already been identified. It goes by the name of Mastodon and is currently experiencing a gigantic onslaught.

Here we toot, not tweet

Mastodon (official website) is a short messaging service made in Germany. More specifically, the service was dispatched to the World Wide Web in 2016 by Jena-based developer Eugen Rochko. Anyone switching from Twitter to Mastodon will probably feel right at home, given the strongly similar features. However, it is not twitter that is used here, but rather trumpeting. After all, the eponymous mastodon is a prehistoric animal that is related to the mammoth and had a corresponding trunk. In addition to the small-format blog post designation, however, it is primarily the basic structure that distinguishes Mastodon from Twitter. After all, it relies on a decentralized system, which could prove to be a big advantage. Since it is open source, it cannot be bought by anyone, unlike was the case with Twitter. So it belongs to all users equally.

David vs. Goliath

If you compare the user numbers of the two platforms, they are worlds apart. While about 5.6 million users are currently busy tooting on Mastodon, Twitter still has 238 million users. So Elon Musk would actually have to make many questionable moves with his newly acquired short message service until Mastodon can catch up with this lead. Nevertheless, the open-source principle on which Mastodon is based is a great role model. After all, network activists have increasingly complained about Twitter being in private hands at all in recent months in light of Elon Musk’s purchase intentions. Since the social network has now become one of the most important mouthpieces for politicians, media and public figures, many believe it should also become public property.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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Now that Elon Musk is the new head of Twitter, users of the popular short message service fear a radicalization of the platform. Many are even looking around for an alternative. Could Mastodon fill the gap left by the „old“ Twitter? Goodbye Twitter! Hello Mastodon? It’s official, Elon Musk is the CEO of Twitter, effective … (Weiterlesen...)

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