The decentralized social network Mastodon has been experiencing a population explosion since Elon Musk took over Twitter. When the founder of Tesla or SpaceX took control of the microblogging platform, there were many users who feared that some of the characteristic precepts and principles of said social network would be distorted, and there were numerous dropouts.
Since October Mastodon has gone from 300,000 to 2,500,000 users thanks to the exodus of Twitter users
Some simply expressed their distrust in the direction that Musk intended to print in the operation of Twitter, others remained waiting, but although the majority continued to participate in it, a good part of those who opted for the exodus landed on Mastodon, a social network with decentralized servers that last October it barely had 300,000 users. To date, they have already exceeded 2.5 million.
This has been confirmed by Eugen Rochko, CEO, founder and developer of Mastodon, through the platform’s official blog. Rochko has also taken the opportunity to recall that Elon Musk has broken his word not to expel users from Twitter for their publications, in a staunch defense of freedom of expression, to subsequently not only have blocked the account of a user who reported promptly from Musk’s trips on his private jet but has also blocked the accounts of various journalists.
There is the added circumstance that Twitter has communicated the prohibition (later revoked) of links from Twitter that would facilitate access to the Mastodon accounts of Twitter users. This sum of events has served Rochko to remind us of the dangers of centralized platforms (such as Twitter), capable of imposing arbitrary and unilateral blockades as well as limitations to the content that can be published, under penalty of cancellation or blocking of the infringing accounts.
Mastodon promotes the absence of intermediaries between the content creator and the audience, so that the press and government institutions in particular do not have to depend on private platforms to contact the public.
Along with Mastodon there are other recently created social platforms (Hive, Post…) as well as other more veteran ones (Discord, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr…) that seek to take advantage of the controversy generated by Musk with his controversial arrival on Twitter but of course Mastodon This situation has been good for him.
Its founder is confident in Mastodon’s future and looks forward to growth that will especially strengthen its role in information around the world.
