With social media websites, such as Mastodon, emerging as viable alternatives to Twitter, users have a host of options to choose from

Sheetal

Twitter, run by the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk, now comes at a price — $8 for blue tick for new as well as existing verified customers. And if that is not enough, reinstatment of Donald Trump’s account has added fuel to fire! We take a look at how other social media websites, such as Mastodon, Tribel Social and Hive Social, have become the alternatives for celebs and others quitting Twitter.

Tweeting for change

A tweet by Elon Musk, ‘Use Signal’, back in January 2021, moved the markets and the shares of not-so-popular Signal Advance, a tech-component manufacturing company, skyrocketed, whereas he had hinted at downloading the message service app Signal, as it let you send encrypted messages.

Cut to November 2022, when Musk has himself stepped in to fill the shoes of Twitter CEO, the same users who downloaded Signal are finding replacements for Twitter! These include Mastodon, Social Tribe, Hive Social and Truth Social, besides the already popular ones like Reddit.

On Saturday, the official page of Mastodon (@joinmastodon) on Twitter displayed the information: “We have just passed over two million active monthly users, a new record! People are voting with their feet. The future of social media doesn’t have to belong to a billionaire; it can be in the hands of its users.”

This pretty much explains its user-friendly model, as it claims to be the largest decentralised social networking platform built on open web standards and not based on any profit motive.

This Is Us executive producer Ken Olin wrote, “I’m on @TribelSocial for the rest of the day. Gotta wean myself off of this soon…”

Another one, Hive Social (@TheHIVE_Social) tweeted, “1,000,000 besties and the number keeps climbing! Thank you to everyone who has followed us, joined, shared their Hive posts and profiles, invested in our WeFunder, and overall just given us such an incredible amount of support!” It has reached the Top 20 on US app store and had a weekend surge of one million users.

(Inputs by Sukhmani Kooner)

Understanding Mastodon

• Right after you download Mastodon and click on the create account button, you can pick a server based on the region, interest or the general purpose.
• These servers are managed by users, but that doesn’t mean your pick (server) will restrict you to message anyone on the micro-blogging site. There are a wide range of categories, such as general, regional, art, music, journalism, activism, LGBT, games, tech, academia, furry, food, among others.
• Mastodon was first launched in 2016, but the reason why it hasn’t gotten big lies in one of its strengths – decentralisation! Because the community you join puts you in a group. For instance, some have servers for their countries; in the same way, a community could be about people who like cats — mastodon.cats.
• The updates are called ‘toots’, instead of tweets and the hearts have been replaced by stars.
• There is no official verification process for profiles on the site. However, the company can verify links on people’s profiles to confirm they are the owners.

Figuratively speaking

Although MIT technologies and Bot Sentinal claim that Twitter has lost around one million users since the ownership change, Musk has not acknowledged the same. “Twitter usage is at an all-time high,” shared Elon Musk, validating it with a chart that showed Twitter’s monetisable daily active users (mDAU) growing rapidly — up from 240 to 255 million since July, while US mDAU alone is up by three million. On the other hand, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also rolled out monetisation tools for Facebook and Instagram users in June this year. It was on a testing phase for just the creators, old and new, in order to get discovered and earn directly. Initially, Meta set out to implement it in 2023, but then it happened earlier than expected. Nevertheless, this monetisation of social networks is inevitable; sooner or later it will happen. Only Musk has a more rogue approach! Or as actress Tara Dublin puts it in a ‘pinned’ tweet on her account, “I am ‘me’ in case Elon Musk decides to take away my blue check because I refused to be extorted to pay back his bad investment #Verified.”

The mascot

Unlike Twitter’s bird, Mastodon’s mascot is an elephant on a green hill. It resembles a ‘mastodon or mammoth’ belonging to the extinct genus Mammut (family Mammutidae), which inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or Pliocene epochs.