A number of Twitter users have expressed interest in switching to different platforms since Elon Musk's takeover of the social media site. Mastodon has been one of the most significant winners as a result. What exactly is it though?


According to the social network, it currently has more than 655,000 users, of which more than 230,000 have joined in the past seven days.


On the surface, Mastodon is quite similar to Twitter. Users create accounts and submit posts (called "toots"), which can be liked, re-posted, and replied to. Users can also follow one another.


However, the manner that it operates behind the scenes is rather different.


This is one of the reasons why it is drawing new users, but at the same time, it has produced some misunderstanding among those who are joining up for the service.



The site has been around for six years, but the level of activity it is experiencing right now is unprecedented, and it is having trouble keeping up with the demand for new signups.

This is a quick reference to help you navigate your way around it.

Where do all of these servers come from?
When you sign up, the first thing you'll be asked to do is select a server to play on. There are a tonne of them, and they are organised according to a variety of categories, such as the United Kingdom, social media, gaming, technology, and so on.

It does not make a great difference which one you are on because you will be able to follow users on all of the others anyhow, but it does provide you with a beginning community that is more likely to publish items that you are interested in as well as other related content.

Some of the popular ones - such as social and UK - are currently running quite slowly because of demand.

According to Ryan Wild, who runs the MastodonApp.UK server through his company Superior Networks, he has forced to suspend registration since there have been more than 6,000 new users joining in the past 24 hours.

"I wanted to see what the hype was about," he remarked.

I turned on the server at ten o'clock at night on Friday, and when I woke up the next morning, there were one thousand people there who I had no idea would show up.

Where do you look for people?
The server that you select is incorporated into your user name. For instance, I used my existing Twitter handle, which is @zsk, and selected the server located in the United Kingdom. This resulted in my user name being @zsk@mastodonapp.uk. That is my address there, so if you were looking for me, you would look it up there.

If you are on the same server, you can search merely using the person's name, but if they are on a different server you will need their entire address.

Mastodon will not make suggestions regarding users that you might be interested in following, in contrast to Twitter.

Hashtags can also be searched.

Exactly why are there servers?
It's complicated, but I'll do my best to keep it straightforward.

Mastodon is not one platform. It's not one "thing" and it is not owned by one person or firm. All of these different servers link together, and form a collective network, but they are owned by different people and organizations.


Decentralized platforms are popular for precisely this reason—they cannot be managed at the whim of a single entity, bought or sold—and are referred to as being decentralised.

The disadvantage of this is that you are now at the mercy of whoever decides to manage your server; if they decide to shut it down, you lose your account. If a server owner decides to close it, Mastodon is requesting that they provide their users three months' notice.

By the way, Jack Dorsey, the original creator of Twitter, is currently working on a new network called BlueSky and has stated that he wants that network to be decentralised as well.

Mastodon is moderated in what way?
It's a genuine hot potato, this. All servers currently have their own moderation policies, while some don't have any. Some servers have made the decision to ban links to websites with a lot of bots or that appear to contain a lot of unpleasant content; as a result, these websites won't be available to users on the servers where they are blocked. Additionally, posts may be reported to the server's owners.

The proprietors can remove it if it contains hate speech or unlawful material, but that does not mean that it will be removed everywhere.

If this platform keeps expanding, it will become a major problem.

People have reportedly already been the targets of hate speech, and the BBC has seen instances of homophobic abuse.

Ads are present?
No. Although there are no advertisements, nothing prevents you from posting a post advertising your business or item.

In terms of how you view postings, Mastodon doesn't provide a curated experience like Twitter does; instead, you typically see what your followers are saying as they say it.

Is using it free?
Depending on the server you are on, some are requesting money because they are unpaid, but most of them aren't.




Author By! K!