Tech

What is Mastodon that alternative Twitter users are flocking to?

What is Mastodon that alternative Twitter users are flocking to?

With Twitter in disarray since Elon Musk took control of it last month, Mastodon , a decentralized alternative platform, has seen a flood of new users.

Musk himself poked fun at the rival network's rise in popularity on Monday, in a tweet he later deleted, saying: "If you don't like Twitter anymore, there's a great site called Masterbatedone."

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a free social media network where you can post toots (instead of tweets), follow and favorite people and organizations.

But while Twitter and Facebook are each controlled by a single company, Mastodon is installed on thousands of computer servers, mostly run by volunteer administrators who patch their systems together.

It is important to note that because it is run by volunteers, the platform is ad-free.

Mastodon is the brainchild of Eugen Rochko, a young German programmer who sought to create a public sphere that was beyond the control of a single entity.

"We hit 1,028,362 monthly active users across the network today," Rochko said Monday. "That's so cool."

This is still small compared to its established rivals. However, Mastodon's user growth in just a few days has been impressive.

Before Musk completed the acquisition of Twitter on October 27, Mastodon's growth was averaging 60-80 new users per hour. That rose to 3,568 new registrations in one hour on Monday morning.

Rochko started the platform in 2016, when rumors spread that PayPal founder and Musk ally Peter Thiel wanted to buy Twitter.