What is Mastodon and will it replace Twitter?

Since Elon Musk took the reigns of social media giant Twitter and introduced dramatic changes, some angered users have started looking for a replacement.

Musk's short time as Twitter CEO so far has seen him firing a huge percentage of the work force, including some top execs at the company. Musk originally purchased the company for $44bn, claiming that he wanted to rid the site of bots and fake profiles, but his first decisions as CEO have made users worried that platform will become overrun with extremism and hate speech.

The Tesla boss has since introduced a new verification system, Twitter Blue, which allows users to pay have a blue tick next to their name, usually reserved for people like celebrities, government officials, or companies and trusted news organisation. He's also reinstated some high profile accounts that had been banned, including Kanye West.

As some users complain about the new changes to the site, many have moved from Twitter to a similar platform, Mastodon. Mastodon is a free, decentralized, loosely organized group of servers, so rather than all running in one place with a centralised timeline like Twitter, users can access thousands of smaller servers each dedicated to a specific subject.

For example, mastodonapp.uk is a server specifically for users based in the UK, primarycare.app encourages people who work in the primary care industry to join, or animation fans could join ani.work, a server for animations from all over the world. Each server is a bit like a twitter timeline, but tweets are called posts (they used to be called toots), if you share someone else's post, you've reblogged or boosted it, and there are hashtags and lists as well.

The separate servers would make it difficult for the platform to replace twitter, depending on what you use the platform for, as it can be hard to search across servers for information. But, if you only use Twitter for one or a handful of subjects to discuss and hear different ideas on them, Mastodon could be for you.

To create an account you have to find a server you like the look of, because rather than signing up to the site as a whole, you create an account on one specific server. Every server is operated by an independent organization or individual and may differ in moderation policies.

However, this isn't a lifelong commitment, if you find a different server you prefer you can easily move your account over there without losing your followers. With so many people moving from Twitter to Mastodon, some servers may be overwhelmed with applications for an account, so it might be wise to choose a smaller, more niche server to make your account and then move server further down the line if you want to, but be warned, the server you choose will become part of your handle so people will be able to see it when you make posts.

If you want to find other people who have also moved from Twitter to Mastodon, you can use the hashtag #TwitterMigration to locate former tweeters.

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