Millions are fleeing Twitter for its main competitor

Twitter and Mastodon logos are seen in this illustration taken November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Don’t worry if you have never heard of Mastodon, few have. However, millions of Twitter users are leaving to Mastodon, a decentralized competitor as former Musk and Twitter fans say goodbye to the blue bird. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, Mastodon’s user base has increased from about 300,000 monthly active users to 2.5 million between October and November.

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According to Mastodon’s CEO, founder and lead developer, Eugen Rochko, the site’s traffic is skyrocketing. Announced in a new blog post from the Mastodon founder, his company’s account on Twitter has also been removed completely, as part of Twitter’s new crackdown on linking to outside sites. This is a new policy, recently imposed by Musk.

Rochko’s post also addressed Twitter’s now-reversed bans on sharing links to Mastodon, many journalists, and the @joinmastodon account itself following the still-in-place ban on @ElonJet. “This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say while holding your social graph hostage,” Rochko said. “At Mastodon, we believe that there doesn’t have to be a middleman between you and your audience and that journalists and government institutions especially should not have to rely on a private platform to reach the public.”

While Mastodon is still very small and nowhere near attracting enough users to make money, Rochko is bullish about the company’s future. “Understanding that freedom of the press is absolutely essential for a functional democracy, we are excited to see Mastodon grow and become a household name in newsrooms across the world, and we are committed to continuing to improve our software to face up to new challenges that come with rapid growth and increasing demand,” he wrote.

Other Twitter alternatives have also seen massive user growth, similar to when many users left WhatsApp after a new policy from the company led many to believe their data was compromised. They fled to the likes of Signal and Telegram.