The Twitter takeover by Elon Musk at the end of October 2022 brought some criticism to the Tesla boss. Some users therefore seem to have looked around for a Twitter alternative. The decentralized short message service Mastodon was able to double its number of users and recorded over 1 million active users. But does Mastodon have what it takes to become a Twitter competitor?
Elon Musk’s missteps in buying Twitter are lined up. First there is a commitment to take over the service completely – which triggers a huge media response. Shortly thereafter, a legal dispute with the Twitter management almost escalated. Musk doesn’t want to buy at the negotiated terms. Now, issues like free speech and $8 subscriptions dominate the Twitter discourse. At least the decentralized network Mastodon seems to get this chaos increased attention.
Musk’s Twitter chaos deters users
Above all, the new Twitter boss has one problem – he has to make Twitter profitable quickly. To achieve this, Musk is proposing to offer the blue tick to verify a profile for $8 in the future. In addition, directly after the Twitter board, employees of the platform were fired en masse.
Now some employees are to return to maintain operations. One wonders if all of this is part of Musk’s PR strategy to keep the conversation going. But for many Twitter users, the ill-considered actions of the new Twitter boss acted as a deterrent. Although he wants to campaign for more freedom of speech, criticism of Musk’s person and his controversial tweets continues. He therefore triggered an exodus of Twitter users who want to turn their backs on the platform.
Decentralized network Mastodon as an alternative
Some now went to the popular Twitter alternative Mastodon. The young short message service works in a similar way to Twitter, but in a completely different way. In 2016, the German-Russian Eugen Rochko founded the decentralized network. Unlike Twitter, the service should not simply be taken over and redesigned by a company boss. Rather, the non-profit open source project is distributed across many different servers. A central access or a general shutdown is not possible because individuals, clubs and organizations operate different servers.
In order to further develop and finance the project, Rochko founded the non-profit Mastodon GmbH (gGmbH). The source code is available to everyone for review and independent further development. The Mastodon network thus differs significantly from the centralized short message service Twitter, whose source code is not freely accessible.
Also read: Elon Musk is turning Twitter upside down so extensively
Outsourced moderation at Mastodon
The differences in the function of Mastodon are small at first. As with Twitter, short messages, pictures and videos can be sent. However, 500 characters are allowed instead of the usual 280 characters on Twitter. This means that longer “toots” can be written, as Mastodon’s short messages are also called. “Toots” are analogous to the tweets (Eng. “Zwitschern”) for the horn of the eponymous mastodon mammoth.
But similar to Twitter, there is a question of moderating the vast amount of content that users share on a daily basis. From the very beginning, Mastodon was concerned with being free of illegal content such as forbidden symbolism or serious discrimination. At Mastodon, each individual server makes its own decision as to what is censored, deleted or blocked. Unlike centralized competitors, where hate speech or disinformation is censored according to internal moderation rules. A general exclusion of people by blocking profiles in the entire network is almost impossible with a decentralized distribution on different servers. After a user has been blocked, they can select a different server for their content. The social network has thus outsourced one of the most crucial questions of freedom of expression and possible censorship to its users in a decentralized manner.
Only one employee – the founder himself
Since the network is not dependent on a higher-level moderation, the personnel costs are kept within limits. So much so that founder Rochko is Mastodon’s only paid employee to date. In an interview with “timehe explains that the division into servers equals the “democratic process”. For example, if a server with hate speech appears, other servers can join forces to block it.
Rochko believes Musk’s US-centric view of free speech on Twitter is misguided. Mastodon is therefore based on the principle of German freedom of expression, in which human dignity from Article 1 of the Basic Law is paramount. In his opinion, hate speech therefore has no place on a social media platform.
But how does Mastodon intend to ensure hate speech doesn’t occur? After all, the platform has no overarching policies — and no staff to moderate content. Rochko relies on the self-moderation of the server. In his experience, many of these have stricter rules than Twitter. So far, the platform has not attracted groups that otherwise use open forums for hate speech, such as Parler or Truth Social. However, if a group sets up a hate speech server, other servers can mute it, allowing the content to reverberate in an “echo chamber” — but not reach the network as a whole.
How do the different servers work on Mastodon?
When you join the social network, you initially choose a server on which to save your profile. Each server has its own moderation criteria. The operator can be an individual, a group or an independent organisation. There are now 3550 different servers that can be reached via Mastodon. As long as the individual moderation rules are respected, everyone in the Mastodon network can see a profile’s messages. It is also possible to move an entire profile with your own contributions to another server. This can happen without losing all followers. Of course, the user is faced with his own decisions and has to consider which server to connect to. A higher degree of personal initiative is therefore necessary.
The owners have to pay for the operation of the individual servers themselves. The decentralized network is therefore dependent on the cooperation and willingness of the members to donate. But Mastodon is ad and tracking free, which is a significant difference to Twitter’s business model. Many questions about company friendliness or a possible annoyance of advertising customers do not even arise. Because although Musk announced increased freedom of speech in the Twitter takeover, he backtracked in a letter to Twitter advertisers and said: Twitter must not become a “hell hole”. He also wants Twitter to remain “warm and welcoming” to everyone. Time will tell where freedom of speech is better off in the end. Due to its decentralization, Mastodon initially requires more initiative from its users. As long as Twitter is weak, this network is currently an interesting alternative for many.
Source:
- Mastodon: server (accessed on 11/07/22)