You’re not alone if you’re planning to leave Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover, but there’s also an alternative called Mastodon that seems superficially similar to Twitter.
The platform has been around since 2016, and it has a mascot that is an animal with a trunk that looks like a mastodon or mammoth and is sometimes displayed on a tablet or smartphone. Mastodon messages are known as toots, and they can be answered, liked, and re-posted, as well as followed.
According to the social network, it now has more than 655,000 users, with more than 230,000 added last week. It works similarly to Twitter, allowing users to tag other users, share media and even follow other accounts. The only difference between the two microblogging platforms is that they use different servers. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon does not recommend followers. You can also look for hashtags.
Some servers have decided not to link to others that appear to be full of bots or have a high amount of hateful content, which means that they will be invisible to those on the servers where they are blocked. Posts can also be reported to the administrators of the server.
If it is hate speech or illegal content, owners can delete it, but that does not mean it is gone forever.
The first thing you need to do when you sign up is to choose a server. There are a lot of them. Many of them are themed, with many organized by countries, cities or interests, such as the UK, social networks, technology, games and so on.
The server you select is built into your username. If you are on the same server, you can only search for the name of the person, if they are on another server, you need their full address.
The sources for this piece include an article in BBC.