Mastodon gained more active users since Twitter restriction

Mastodon, competitor of the social media platform Twitter, has gained a lot more users in the past week. Since Twitter announced the new measures, Mastodon has suddenly become a lot more popular.

Mastodon, an open source software

This platform is an open source network and uses the ActivityPub standard. This decentralized platform consists of several servers that can normally be set up by users themselves. As a user you have to choose a server on which you want to create an account. This server actually determines the moderation rules, so you can see different posts for each server.

For example, one server can block images or entire posts from another server. As a user, you must have some confidence in the server you choose. Because the administrator of this server, for example, can also view DMs by default.

The advantage is that you can easily move your accounts, or refer them, to another server. The accounts you follow and the followers who follow you will move to the new server. There are a total of around 7100 servers to choose from. The largest and best known is that of the platform itself, namely Mastodon.social. The social media platform is similar to Twitter where an account allows you to post messages for followers to see.

Increase in users

Since Twitter has a limit for users to see a certain number of messages, the use of Mastodon has increased considerably. For example, the number of users has increased from 1.2 million to 1.9 million in just two weeks. In addition, with the new Threads, Instagram will support the open source framework AcitivityPub. This allows Threads users to take all their users to a Mastodon server. The nice thing about an open source network is that users can easily transfer their account to a new server. These new developments are leading and make Mastodon interesting for many users.

What exactly are the differences?

Thanks to Mastodon’s decentralized nature, creating an account is a little trickier. Especially if you don’t know exactly how it works yet. Compared to Twitter, you can set up an account at Mastodon yourself. So far, the platform is not widely used by the general public. Although that may change in the future. For now, Twitter’s reach is unmatchable for many. Especially because the news platform Twitter is still one of the largest at the moment.

Restriction Twitter

Twitter’s restrictions have resulted in a surge in users for Mastodon. This has happened before in the past, when Elon Musk announced he was taking over Twitter. The acquisition of Musk then led to an increase of up to 2.6 million active users. However, this also dropped again to 1.1 million in the following months. Whether the active users of Mastodon continue to rise this time remains to be seen.