For a Twitter Alternative, Mastodon is too focused on…Twitter

It’s dark times for social media. From accusations of privacy interference to the enabling of rampant disinformation, just about every mainstream platform receives criticism these days. This includes Threads, Twitter’s (sorry, we can’t force ourselves to call it X just yet) recently-launched competitor, powered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. 

Enter Mastodon.

Created by the Russia-born German developer Eugen Rochko, it is a free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. Once a niche project, it started to gain traction after Elon Musk announced the takeover of Twitter in May 2022.

Since then, it has seen the influx of users recurrently. In most cases, following Musk’s controversial decisions, such as rate limit exceeded.

In today’s article we’ll take a closer look at it.

What’s the fuss about?

Ok, so first things first. Mastodon is a social media like any other. Accordingly, to use it, you first need to register in it, which is a pretty simple and straightforward procedure. All you need to do is type in your email address, confirm it, add some basic details – and you’re good to go. Once you’re done, you’ll see a window where two happy elephants are congratulating each other, saying “you’ve made it.

Mastodon registration. Source: Mastodon

You can then custom your profile by personalising it alongside your home feed. 

Or you can make your first post and share your mastodon profile with your friends.

Interface-wise, Mastodon has a lot in common with Twitter . To the left, there’s a box where you type in, shall we say, “mastodons”. The character limit is 500 as opposed to the standard 280 Twitter’s one. 

To the right, there’s the bar where you get pretty much the same options to choose from as on Twitter.

Mastodon personal handle. Source: Mastodon

The newsfeed is likewise similar. However, the icons are slightly different. Instead of the heart button, there’s a star. Meanwhile, the retweet icon is called boost. Instead of the word bubble, the replies on Mastodon are depicted as arrow.

Mastodon’s icon. Source: Mastodon

And what are mastodoners buzzing about?

Well, you wouldn’t believe it but…

it’s Twitter!

It seems like Mastodon has predominantly attracted people who are anti-Musk, providing it with a haven for venting and criticizing.

Here’s a “mastodon” made by Nick Martin, who runs The Informant newsletter. He wrote that “If you're a journalist and still active on Twitter, you're helping prop up a company that hates you and everything you do. Continuing to give your time and effort to Elon Musk is a self-inflicted wound that won't stop bleeding until you tend to it. Many of your readers have already exited. You should too.”

Nick Martin’s Mastodon handle. Source: Mastodon

This is by no means a single tweet. 

Before that, we also encountered many similar posts. Here’s one of them by journalist Dan Gillmor who used even stronger words for describing Musk and his platform, saying that “he is systematically turning his platform into a showcase for people and entities that see democracy as an impediment to achieving what can accurately be understood as fascist goals.” 

Dan Gillmor’s Mastodon handle. Source: Mastodon

Meanwhile, on the day Musk tried changing the logo of Twitter at his headquarter’s in San Francisco, Taylor Lorenz, who is a technology writer at the Washington Post, pointed out that he lacked the necessary permits to do so.

Taylor Lorenz’s Mastodon handle. Source: Mastodon

It is not to say that Twitter/X is the only topic circulating on Mastodon. However, its recurrence on the platform is noticeable. 

And that, alongside Mastodon’s somewhat lackluster interface, makes it look like a Twitter copycat that has yet to deliver.

Previously, we analyzed whose future looks brighter: Threads or Twitter’s?