Mastodon, dubbed an open-source, decentralized, or federated social network that allows users to build their own networks or instances and has been cited as an alternative social media platform to Twitter, has seen a meteoric rise since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and that rise shows no signs of slowing.
Mozilla, the creator of the popular Firefox browser, and Tumblr wants to be a part of the rise as it works to establish a presence on the platform. This follows an announcement that it would start running a Mastodon instance, one of the decentralized servers on which the social network is built.
This follows Musk’s temporary suspension of users who tweeted their Mastodon usernames. Furthermore, any links to the competing service were prohibited over the weekend. However, he has since admitted that the apparent action to prevent Twitter users from switching was a mistake.
According to Eugen Rochko, Mastodon’s founder and lead developer, the platform has grown by more than 800 per cent. According to Rochko, it grew “from approximately 300k monthly active users to 2.5m between October and November, with an increasing number of journalists, political figures, writers, actors, and organizations migrating.” Despite the CEO of Twitter’s best efforts to disparage the competing platform. The ad-free social media platform has recently attracted 2.5 million users.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheGuardian.