Though Elon Musk’s messy takeover of Twitter has only been going on for a little over a month, many feel the social media site has already begun an unavoidable downward spiral. Marketers are running away. A small number of the senior executives are also leaving. Musk’s implementation of Twitter Blue was a total failure. The FTC claims that it is “very concerned” about the business. Musk warned workers that it is possible to declare bankruptcy. Former engineers claim that the site might collapse at any time.
Naturally, the uncertainty has prompted a lot of people to look into Twitter alternatives. One of the most popular places for former Twitter users to go is Mastodon, a decentralized platform launched in 2016. When Musk’s purchase was revealed in April, the service had an early boost, but it’s seen an even
According to founder Eugen Rochko, Mastodon added approximately 500,000 new users between October 27 and November 6, nearly tripling its user size. According to data from Similarweb, the mastodon. social server and joinmastodon.org, the two most popular “entry points” to Mastodon, are receiving more than four times as much daily traffic as they did at the end of October before Musk took over the firm.
Although it has happened before, this is the biggest exodus of Twitter users to the “fediverse.” Even many people who haven’t completely stopped using Twitter have started promoting their Mastodon accounts.
Not everyone, however, is prepared or able to give up on Twitter. And not everyone believes Mastodon can adequately replace what Twitter has to offer.
Thanks to the rescue’s well-known “Crouton & Friends” account, Twitter has long been a crucial source of donations for Beth Hyman, executive director of the SquirrelWood animal sanctuary in New York. By broadcasting nightly videos of Crouton, a newborn cow residing at the sanctuary, she started expanding SquirrelWood’s Twitter following in 2018.
She claims to have joined Mastodon and CounterSocial after witnessing a decline in her follower count in the days following Musk’s takeover, but she is dubious about her ability to duplicate the popularity of her Twitter account on the new network. “Twitter has always been our primary home base. This takes a lot of work, and it’s not like you can turn on the light, go somewhere else, and turn it back on again.
She’s also found that it’s just not as easy to share photos and videos of SquirrelWood’s animals — the main draw for her social media followers — on Mastodon due to its file size constraints. “We’re taking care of 70 animals, I need something that I can do on the fly very easily,” she said.
For others, the decentralized nature of Mastodon has other drawbacks. Eric Feigl-Ding is an epidemiologist who grew his Twitter following at the start of the pandemic when he was among the first to go viral tweeting about the potential threat posed by the novel coronavirus. He now uses his Twitter account, where he has more than 700,000 followers, to share updates about the pandemic and to promote public health policy.
He says he tried to sign up for the mastodon. social server only to find that it was full and that he and some colleagues are now debating starting their server, But he worries he won’t be able to reach the same people as he can on Twitter.
“I knew I wanted to reach policymakers, members of Congress, and journalists,” he says. “People who have the power to shape public opinion, change policy, and move the needle on this pandemic. And Twitter is that platform. Twitter is the platform to get your message out. They’re not sitting on Mastodon.”
Feigl-Ding, who has spent a lot of time debunking COVID-19 misinformation, also worries about the consequences of leaving. “You do not want to cede the town square to misinformation, to disinfo, to slanted views on things,” he said. “You want to be there to engage, you want to show up at the debate.”
Others worry about losing the friendships and community they’ve formed on Twitter. Steven Aquino, a tech journalist who covers accessibility, says that Mastodon isn’t a realistic alternative for many people with disabilities because it lacks many of Twitter’s accessibility features. It also just wouldn’t be the same, he says. “The whole point of social media is to be social, and for a lot of disabled people … social [media] is how they interact with other humans,” he tells AFKFree.
At the same time, the fact that Musk cut Twitter’s accessibility team makes him worried Twitter itself could become less usable. “The fact that they laid off the entirety of the accessibility team says a lot about what they think about people like me, and where they want the service to be,” he says.
“There’s so much being written about what Elon is doing, and hiring and firing, and those are all important things. But there is no respect for what is the real impact on the people who use the service.”
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