Elon Musk buys Twitter, promises a revolution – starting with the paid blue check – and begins the escape from social media with destination Mastodon. CNN outlines a dynamic picture to say the least: the new era of Twitter does not seem to convince all users: product changes and the hypothesis of new rules push to look for alternative solutions. Among the favorite ‘destinations’ stands Mastodon, a social network that has existed since 2016 and which – apparently – has seen significant growth in recent weeks. The identikit of Mastodon, moreover, recalls that of the creature currently in Musk’s hands: the posts are ordered in a time-line that is updated on a chronological basis, without the decisive influence of various algorithms. No subscriptions, no sums to pay, no advertising for the social network attributable to the ‘creator’ Eugen Rochko and supported by a crowdfunding mechanism.
In the Italian version, “Mastodon describes itself as the largest free, open-source and decentralized microblogging network in the world. In simpler terms, it is a Twitter self-managed by the users themselves ”.
Mastodon calls itself “the largest decentralized social network. It is part of the fediverse, an international community made up of over 5 million subscribers spread over about 12,000 independent servers whose goal is to put social media back in the hands of users. Unlike traditional social media, it is open source, it does not collect subscriber data, it has no advertising or secret algorithms that decide what you need to see “.
The ‘skeleton’ of operations resembles that of Twitter and, in a sense, facilitates the transition. The tweet on Mastodon is a toot, measuring up to 500 characters. Retweeting is a boost.
On Mastodon “each instance has its own administrator and code of conduct, so be sure to read them before the toot. For example, mastodon.uno has this in its code of conduct. The following types of content will be removed from public history, and may result in the suspension of the account and the revocation of access to the service: Racism; Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities; Xenophobic and / or violent nationalism “. The toot rules are also about privacy. Each message, among the various options, can be set as “public, which means it will appear on local and federated timelines”. Alternatively, it can be “for followers only, it means only your followers will see it”.
How is Mastodon ‘used’? There is not a single application but several, suitable for almost all desktop and mobile operating systems. The social network can also be used with a web client: the official website of Mastodon reports in particular Halcyon and Pinafore.social.
