Not everyone seems to have faith in Elon Musk, who is renowned for his strong sympathies for the American right, rash decisions, and a fortune that makes him the richest man in the world, according to Forbes. In fact, despite the Tesla CEO surpassing a record 15 million new unique daily users in his first seven days as Twitter’s CEO, the dissertation appears to be a quiet but expanding phenomena.This is demonstrated by the exodus of well-known individuals like Jameela Jamil, Shondra Rimes, and Gigi Hadid, as well as businesses like General Motors and fashion labels like Balenciaga, which made the decision to leave the social network in opposition to the takeover. It is also demonstrated by the direct competitor of the app’s explosive expansion. Mastodon is currently regarded as the anti-Twitter with 4.4 million users and 230,000 new members in recent weeks. It was established in 2016 by Eugen Rochko’s non-profit organization in Germany, and it markets itself as an open-source, free software platform that is independent of major players in the computer industry, has no advertising, and is supported by user donations. In other words, the surface level of the idealistic version of twitter.

At the time of registration, everyone has the option to either subscribe to an already-existing channel with the aid of various filters, such as geographic or thematic area, or create their own channel called an instance, in a manner similar to digital self-management, using a mechanism that may initially appear to be repellent and counterintuitive. The Fediverse (Federate Universe) concept is that each channel is a “place of origin” that does not restrict connection with other users from other locations. The title winks at the appropriate metaphor of federations. There are currently 70,000 of them in the fields of music, technology, and sports, but the number is expected to rise. In a previous interview with Time magazine, Eugen Rochko, whose goal is to “democratize social media,” stated, “I started Mastodon because I dislike the top-down control practiced by Twitter.”

You might be perplexed as to why anyone would choose Mastodon over Twitter, except the contentious figure of Elon Musk. Mastodon does not utilize user profiling, in contrast to Twitter, because there is no centralized server or algorithm that suggests posts or content to users. Both are microblogging services, which implies that posts can only be a certain amount of characters long and are referred to as “tools” rather than “tweets.” However, the German platform has extra capabilities that provide users twice as many (500) controls over who can read their information. Similar to the share and like system, hashtags are used to detect trending subjects. Mastodon’s authentication mechanism is free, in contrast to Musk’s app, which recently added the blue tick for a fee. What is certain is that user allegiance is flimsy, and Musk would better keep that in mind. We do not yet know if Mastodon’s attractiveness will be such that it can displace Twitter or whether, like Discord, it will grow a niche of devoted followers unable, however, to penetrate the bubble of the mainstream.