Mastodon: the Alternative Social Network Facing the New Twitter Address

Users are abandoning Twitter due to the new order that its new owner, tycoon Elon Musk, has come to impose. Of the new proposals, the most criticized has been that in order to maintain a verified profile, you would have to pay $8USD per month. For this and other reasons related to privacy or the use of the platform, according to statistics published by the BBC, nearly 500,000 users would have left the blue bird network. For this reason, they have decided to look for new alternatives, including social mastodon.

Mastodon describes itself as a “free and open source decentralized social media platform” founded in 2016 by Eugen Rochko. Even with its long history, it was not well known until its heyday, which occurred at the beginning of November of this year. This application is presented as a replacement for the well-known social network Twitter. What Twitter users find when they arrive at Mastodon is absolute freedom. Here, unlike what you find on the bluebird social network, the power, and posts belong to the users.

Mastodon vs. Twitter

Although both platforms present themselves as microblogging social networks, Mastodon is decentralized and open source. This means that it has multiple servers around the world, so anyone can modify the code and leave users with the freedom to manage their server as they please. Also, this platform is known as a federated network, by this we mean a collection of servers that can be connected to each other, but are owned by different owners.

Even though Mastodon's owner claims it's nothing like Twitter, there are several similarities. Among the main ones, the name of the publications: on Twitter they are called trills (tweets in English), and on Mastodon Toots. The main feature that resembles the platforms is the character limit to make a new publication: on Twitter 280 and on Mastodon 500.

Read also: US $3.2 million a month Elon Musk intends to earn with verified Twitter

What Are the Servers?

Mastodon's servers are groups or collectives, which can be likened to small social networks. They are divided by many categories, from country, ethnicity, gaming, entertainment, etc. Some of these are federated, which allows "Tooteros" to obtain information from servers that have some factor in common.

However, there are others completely exclusive to the tastes of each person. It should be noted that each server has its own rules of coexistence, some of which are:

• Sexually explicit or violent media must be marked as confidential when posting
• No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
• No incitement to violence or promotion of violent ideologies
• No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users
• No illegal content in Germany
• Do not share intentionally false or misleading information

How to Enter Mastodon Social?

Once you enter the https://joinmastodon.org/es page, the first step is to create an account. Following this, you will find a list of servers by theme, by language, by geographic proximity, by taste. It is important to note that some servers allow immediate entry and in the case of others it is necessary to create an exclusive profile for that server, send a request and wait for it to be accepted by its creators. And with this you can be part of the Mastodon community.