Mastodon are hitting the road across Europe and the UK this summer, bringing their signature blend of heavy sludge and progressive metal to fans across the continent. The band’s recently announced tour will see British alt-metal outfit Loathe providing direct support at several dates, adding an extra dose of intensity to the lineup.
The tour kicks off on June 3 at O2 Universum in Hlavní Mesto Praha, CZE and wraps up on July 5 at Evil Live Festival in Lisbon, POR. Get your tickets here.
6/3 Hlavní Mesto Praha, CZE O2 Universum (+ Loathe) 6/5 Nürburg, GER Rock am Ring 6/6 Gdansk, POL Mystic Festival 6/7 Nuremberg, GER Rock im Park 6/9 Zurich, SWI Komplex (+ Loathe) 6/11 Nickelsdorf, AUT Nova Rock 6/13 Leeuwarden, NET Into the Grave Festival 6/14 Castle Donington, UK Download Festival 6/16 Saarbrücken, GER Garage (+ Loathe) 6/17 Dortmund, GER FZW (+ Loathe) 6/19 Clisson, FRA Hellfest 6/21 Dessel, BEL Graspop Metal Meeting 6/22 Hamburg, GER Docks (+ Loathe) 6/24 Copenhagen, DEN Copenhell Festival 6/25 Berlin, GER Huxley’s Neue Welt (+ Loathe) 6/27 Snina, SLO Rock Pod Kamenom 6/28 Zagreb, CRO Culture Factory 7/3 Cartagena, SPA Rock Imperium Festival 7/4 Viveiro, SPA Resurrection Fest 7/5 Lisbon, POR Evil Live Festival
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Unless if you’re really in the know about nascent platforms, you probably didn’t know what Mastodon was until Elon Muskbought Twitter and renamed it X. In the initial aftermath of the acquisition, as users fretted over what direction Twitter would take, millions of users hopped over to Mastodon, a fellow microblogging site. As time went on, users would also try out Bluesky, or Instagram’s Threads app — but because Mastodon was founded in 2016, it had years to develop its own identity as more than just an alternate Twitter.
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon was founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko. Unlike Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any other popular social media site, Mastodon is a nonprofit, meaning that, ideally, its goal is to benefit the public, rather than shareholders.
Mastodon might look like a Twitter clone at first glance, but the underlying system behind the microblogging platform is far more complex. The service is decentralized (no, not in a blockchain way), describing itself as a “federated network which operates in a similar way to email.”
When you first create your account, you choose a server — similar to how you choose to open an email account on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or wherever — which generates your profile’s address. So, for example, if you sign up for Mastodon via the climate justice server, then your address will be @[your username]@climatejustice.social. But no matter which server you sign up with, you will be able to communicate with users from any other server, just like how Gmail users email Hotmail users and vice versa. However, some servers might have blocked other servers (perhaps if it’s an unsavory group), which would mean you can’t communicate with anyone from the blocked server.
The Mastodon lingo
Mastodon users generally refer to individual communities as “instances” or servers. These Mastodon servers can be run by individuals, groups or organizations that each have their own set of rules regarding how users can sign up, as well as their own moderation policies. Some servers let anyone join, while others are invite-only or require approval by an admin. For example, a server for professional scientists asks applicants to include a link to their research to demonstrate that they are, indeed, professionals.
Choosing which server to register your account with might seem stressful, but it’s possible to move your account later, so don’t worry. Plus, you can follow people regardless of which server they’re on.
You may also hear Mastodon described as part of the “Fediverse,” or an interconnected web of various social media services. You know how having a Twitter account doesn’t mean you can use that account on Instagram? Through the Fediverse, your single Mastodon account also grants you access to other decentralized social networks, if that interests you.
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You may ocassionally see Mastodon’s equivalent of tweets being referred to as “toots,” but this is fading out of favor (since it’s kind of silly!). Many people are just calling them “posts” these days, but “toot” is often found referenced in older third-party clients.
Mastodon supports a number of Twitter conventions like replies, retweets, favorites, bookmarks and hashtags. For a while, Mastodon made an intentional choice not to make a quote tweet-like feature, since it can encourage dogpiling criticism, but the platform relented and rolled out that feature in 2025.
In addition, Mastodon lists work slightly differently from Twitter as you can only add people to a list if you’re already following them. And Direct messages on Mastodon are just @username posts, not private messages coming to a DM inbox — just remember to change the visibility settings if you want that message to stay between the two of you.
Anyone can download, modify and install Mastodon on their own server — plus, the developers of the platform don’t own the copyright.
That doesn’t mean that you can grab Mastodon’s code without acknowledging the source, though. Former President Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, initially launched with Mastodon code and passed it off as if it were original software. Mastodon did not take kindly to that.
How do you create a Mastodon account?
When you arrive on the Mastodon website, you can click a button called “create account,” which directs you to a page listing servers to choose from. You can filter these by various factors, like region, language, topic, sign-up speed and more. There, find a server that piques your interest and join — if it’s a server that requires you to be approved, you might need to wait a bit. From there, you can start finding people to follow, regardless of whether they’re registered via your same server.
In effort to minimize confusion on new users picking a server, Mastodon made changes amid the “Twitter exodus” so that it would easier to create an account. Now, when you go to sign up, it will give an easy option to create an account on mastodon.social instead of choosing a server.
How do you decide which Mastodon server to join?
Mastodon’s website has helpful resources — but it’s still a bit overwhelming and challenging to find a home base that aligns with your interests. Ask friends who are already on Mastodon if they have suggestions! Or just join somewhere random, because you can always change your server affiliation later once you get into the swing of things.
Can you talk to people on other Mastodon servers besides your own?
Yes, you can follow people outside of your local server and reply to their posts. However, when you want to follow someone on a different server, you have to enter their username in the search box on your server to find them first, then follow them. You can’t just go to their profile and click the follow button as you would on Twitter.
What’s the difference between the Home, Local and Federated timelines?
Your Home timeline shows you posts from people that you follow, similar to Twitter. The Local timeline shows posts from all users in your server, while the Federated timeline shows you all public posts from users that people in your server follow. (Hint: You can turn on “Slow Mode” in Preferences –> Appearance to hide timeline updates behind a click if things are coming at you too fast!)
What is Mastodon’s moderation policy?
Individual server admins set their own moderation policies, so you should read the policy on the server you choose to ensure it matches up with your values.
What are the drawbacks of Mastodon when compared with Twitter/X?
Mastodon’s user base is a fraction of a percentage of the size of Twitter’s user base. It’s also far less intuitive to navigate, since it hasn’t been designed for a massive global audience like Twitter. That could change in time as more developers join the project in the wake of the Twitter takeover.
What are the benefits of Mastodon compared with Twitter/X?
Well, for one thing, Mastodon is not owned by Elon Musk… however, it’s going to be difficult in the near-term for Mastodon to replicate the same “watercooler of the world” vibe that Twitter was defined by. Some users might prefer Mastodon to X, though, as it’s more customizable by nature. Unlike X, individual communities have different content guidelines, which provide a variety of different user experiences. And while the user base on Mastodon is smaller, this can lead to more personal and direct conversations, at times, compared with tweeting into the void, so to speak.
Is Mastodon safer than Twitter?
Mastodon is what you make of it. Due to its decentralized nature, if you are looking for a more controlled online experience, you can join a server with stricter guardrails against harassment. Some Mastodon features are also built with mitigating harassment in mind. For example, you can only search by hashtag, not by words that appear in a toot. So if you want your post to be discoverable, you can tag it — if you’d rather limit the audience, no one can find your tweet about the Red Sox by simply searching “red sox” if you haven’t tagged it.
However, a text-based search can surface the posts you’ve written, favorited, boosted or have been mentioned in, which can be useful.
Can I post images and video?
As noted above, Mastodon supports many Twitter conventions, but its support for media is more limited. Where Twitter supports a variety of media and other data appended to tweets, including its audio-only social “Spaces,” plus photos, video, GIFs, polls, precise location and experimental “Status” tags, Mastodon simply supports images, videos, audio and polls.
You can add up to four images to a post, up to eight megabytes in size. Video and audio can be any length, but with a file size limit of 40 megabytes.
Can I post privately to friends?
Mastodon offers the ability to set your post’s privacy at the time of writing. Posts can be set to be public to be visible by all; unlisted to make them public but opted out of discovery features; only visible to your followers; or only visible to those users you’ve mentioned.
Can I get verified on Mastodon?
No. There’s no universal verification system like on Twitter. Some servers may vet their user sign-ups and you can self-verify, in a way, by adding links to your Mastodon profile that have a specific attribute (rel=”me”) in order to prove you are who you say you are.
Some servers are having fun with the idea of verification in a less-than-official fashion. For example, the mstdn.social server lets you add blue-and-white checkmarks and other emoji to your display name if you’d like, which make you look verified, even though these don’t mean anything. (Sort of like Twitter’s new verification system! But for free!)
As of summer 2025, Mastodon has under one million monthly active users, and around 10 million registered users — this is to say, Mastodon is much smaller than X which had an estimated 132 million daily active users. Still, not all social networks are created equal, and you might find that you prefer tooting about TTRPGs in a dedicated server, as opposed to tweeting into a realm of madness. Or, you might find that this decentralized system is confusing, and you’ll just ride out the Muskening on X, or switch to Bluesky, Threads, or something else entirely. Choose your own adventure!
I’m not sure I want to leave X. Can I cross-post from X to Mastodon?
Yes, this is possible by way of third-party tools. These require you to authorize your account with Twitter and Mastodon and set up parameters. We’ve had success with Moa Party, which allows you to get specific as to which tweets or retweets are cross-posted. But other tools are available, including Mastodon Twitter Crossposter, which is also available here on GitHub.
Can I find my Twitter friends on Mastodon?
Yes, this is also possible with third-party tools. We’ve seen many Mastodon users trying out tools like Fedifinder, Twitodon and Debirdify, for example.
Does Mastodon work with Bluesky and Threads?
It’s a no for Bluesky — not unless Bluesky chooses to adopt the ActivityPub protocol Mastodon uses. But Bluesky is not planning to integrate with ActivityPub, having decided to build its own networking protocol. There is some skepticism among the developer and open source community about whether or not Bluesky’s decision to go its own way is really about its own protocol’s advantages or if it’s more about producing a spec it could eventually control.
There are many existing protocols for decentralizing discourse, including ActivityPub, SSB, Matrix, & RSS. Each of these are successful in their own right, but none of them fully met the goals we had for a network that enables global long-term public conversations at scale.
Decentralized open source social network Mastodon is rolling out its latest release, version 4.5, which brings support for Quote Posts to all server operators, along with other features for admins, conversation improvements, and more.
The addition of quote posts is one of the bigger changes to how Mastodon’s social network operates, as the social network attempts to compete against larger rivals, like X and Threads. Quoting can be a conversation driver and is considered a baseline feature for text-first social networks. But Mastodon wanted to ensure the feature launched with more user protections so as not to change the culture of its network.
On X, quote posts (formerly known as retweets when X was Twitter) contributed to a culture of “dunking,” where users would often deride others by responding to their post with cruel jokes or insults. That remains a concern today among other new competitors, like Threads and Bluesky.
To address this problem, Mastodon’s version of quote posts comes with added safety controls.
Mastodon gives users several ways to control how their posts can be quoted. For instance, users decide who can quote them through the feature’s settings. Here, you can choose between options like “Anyone,” “Followers only,” or “Just me.” Additionally, users can control the visibility of quote posts by setting them to be visible to the public, to followers only, or a setting called “quiet public,” which makes the quotes public but removes them from Mastodon’s search, trends, and public timeline.
In addition, users can override their default settings on a post-by-post basis, if need be, which could be useful at those times when you want to quote someone without attracting unwanted attention.
Mastodon will also alert the user being quoted in the app, so they can remove their original post from the other person’s quote post, if they feel the need to. Plus, users can opt to block others to prevent them from seeing and quoting their posts in the future.
While the broader rollout of quote posts is the major addition in the 4.5 software release, the update also fixes issues where users on older servers running 4.4 and earlier versions would sometimes miss seeing replies.
Image Credits:Mastodon
Server operators are also gaining new tools to optionally disable content feeds, set a local feed as their homepage, block specific users, and more. The moderation interface has been updated to display needed context, like link previews and quote posts in messages, to aid in decision-making.
Image Credits:Mastodon
Meanwhile, the 4.5 release also brings native emoji support to Mastodon’s web interface.
Mastodon continues to be one of the larger networks on the fediverse, the name for the open social web powered by the ActivityPub social networking protocol. Overall, the fediverse has nearly 12 million users, according to growth tracker FediDB, with Mastodon accounting for north of 8 million of that figure. However, its monthly active user number is only ~670,000.
Instead of relying entirely on donations and grants as before, the company announced this morning it will now offer paid hosting, moderation, and support services for organizations that want to join the open social web.
That network, also called the fediverse, offers a way for individuals and organizations to set up their own servers that interconnect with others that run the same protocol, ActivityPub.
ActivityPub powers a number of different software applications, including Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Misskey, Lemmy, and others, and has been integrated into larger platforms like WordPress, Ghost, and Drupal through plugins.
While anyone can establish an account on a public Mastodon server, some organizations and entities would prefer to run their own so they can set their own rules and manage the service as they see fit. However, server setup and management require at least some technical knowledge. It’s comparable, perhaps, to deciding to run your own installation of WordPress versus opting for a hosted version of WordPress from a service like WordPress.com, Bluehost, DreamHost, or others.
To solve this problem and potentially generate revenue to maintain its operations, Mastodon will launch hosting services. Customers can choose to run their own servers through this model, where Mastodon’s team will manage the servers and optionally offer moderation services.
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Another option will see Mastodon offering support contracts to aid with customers’ in-house tech teams focused on server management and maintenance. The latter would be an option for those companies and organizations that already have their own IT department, but are new to running Mastodon’s federated software.
Mastodon says the servers it’s offering often operate accounts for brands or institutions, and are not general-purpose servers with external, open sign-ups.
The company did not share its pricing, noting it offers a custom billing model that’s flexible, depending on the options they select, like hosting, support, and moderation.
Hosted customers will still be able to define their own rules and policies, however.
Mastodon has already been exploring this solution ahead of today’s launch by partnering with clients like the European Commission, the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, the city of Blois in France, and AltStore, a software company making an alternative app store. Through these relationships, Mastodon has been able to establish a more predictable revenue stream, compared with its Patreon donations.
However, the company stresses that the goal is to diversify Mastodon’s revenue streams, not replace the current model of donations, grants, and sometimes, merch. The company will also continue to operate its own server, mastodon.social, as a well-established entry point for consumers interested in exploring the fediverse.
“We are excited to expand our services to organisations that share our vision of a free, open, and decentralised social web,” said Felix Hlatky, Mastodon’s chief financial officer, in a prepared statement.
“These offerings will provide financial stability for our team while ensuring the Fediverse remains a resilient, community-driven ecosystem.”
Mastodon, an open source, decentralized alternative to X, is rolling out a somewhat controversial feature by adding quote posts, which will launch next week. The feature, which allows a user to quote someone else’s post and re-share it with their own response or commentary, has contributed to a culture of “dunking” on X, where users often deride other people by responding with snark or insulting humor.
To address this concern, Mastodon says it’s implementing quote posts with safety controls.
These protections are designed to allow quote posts to be used responsibly, to “expand discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices,” the platform states.
Image Credits:Mastodon
Mastodon gives users several ways to control how their posts can be quoted. For starters, the platform lets users decide who can quote them through a setting where you can change your defaults. Here, you can set the permissions for who can quote you by choosing between “Anyone,” “Followers only,” or “Just me.” Additionally, you can control the visibility of quote posts by setting them to be visible to the public, to followers only, or a setting called “quiet public,” which makes the quotes public but removes them from Mastodon’s search, trends, and public timeline.
Users will also be able to override their default settings on a post-by-post basis, if need be, by navigating to the “Visibility and interaction settings” within the composer screen. This would be useful if you know you’re about to say something controversial or anything that could attract unwanted attention from those with opposing views, for instance.
Image Credits:Mastodon
Plus, users will have control of their posts even after they’re quoted, the Mastodon blog post about the new feature explains.
When someone quotes a post, the user being quoted is notified in the app, and they can choose to remove their original post from the other person’s quote post. This is accessible through the Options menu (the three dots icon). From this location, users can change the quote settings to address any future quoting of their post going forward. They can also block users to prevent them from seeing and quoting their posts in the future.
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Support for quote posts will first arrive over the week ahead to the larger Mastodon servers at mastodon.online and mastodon.social. It will then become available in Mastodon’s 4.5 software update.
To quote a post, you’ll find the new option under Mastodon’s Boost (similar to X’s repost/retweet feature). Because the fediverse, or open social web, is a network of servers running different software, quote posts may not immediately appear everywhere, and some platforms may not update to use the technical specification enabling quote post support right away.
The social nonprofit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.
The statement follows a lively back-and-forth conversation earlier this weekbetween Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko and Bluesky board member and journalist Mike Masnick. In the conversation, published on their respective social networks, Rochko claimed, “there is nobody that can decide for the fediverse to block Mississippi.” (The Fediverse is the decentralized social network that includes Mastodon and other services, and is powered by the ActivityPub protocol.)
“And this is why real decentralization matters,” said Rochko.
Masnick pushed back, questioning why Mastodon’s individual servers, like the one Rochko runs at mastodon.social, would not also be subject to the same $10,000 per user fines for noncompliance with the law.
At the time of our reporting on this exchange, Mastodon gGmbH, the community-funded nonprofit organization, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Friday, however, the nonprofit shared a statement with TechCrunch to clarify its position, saying that while Mastodon’s own servers specify a minimum age of 16 to sign up for its services, it does not “have the means to apply age verification” to its services.
That is, the Mastodon software doesn’t support it. The Mastodon 4.4 release in July 2025 added the ability to specify a minimum age for sign-up and other legal features for handling terms of service, partly in response to increased regulation around these areas. The new feature allows server administrators to check users’ ages during sign-up, but the age-check data is not stored.
That means individual server owners have to decide for themselves if they believe an age verification component is a necessary addition.
The nonprofit says Mastodon is currently unable to provide “direct or operational assistance” to the broader set of Mastodon server operators. Instead, it encourages owners of Mastodon and other Fediverse servers to make use of resources available online, such as the IFTAS library, which provides trust and safety support for volunteer social network moderators. The nonprofit also advises server admins to observe the laws of the jurisdictions where they are located and operate.
Mastodon notes that it’s “not tracking, or able to comment on, the policies and operations of individual servers that run Mastodon.”
“One of the reasons Mastodon was founded was to allow different jurisdictions to have social media that is independent of the U.S.,” per the statement shared with TechCrunch. “People are free to choose to have their account on a Mastodon server whose policies meet their needs.”
Bounce, a new technology that adds a critical component to the open social web, launches to the public on Monday. The cross-protocol migration tool offers a service that allows users of open social networks like Bluesky and Mastodon to move their follow graphs between their accounts, even though the networks rely on different underlying protocols.
Today, Mastodon users unhappy with the service can opt to move their account to a different Mastodon server, while Bluesky is developing technology that allows users to migrate their account to a new PDS (Bluesky’s term for “personal data server”) on its network. However, Mastodon runs on the ActivityPub Protocol and Bluesky on the AT Protocol, which has limited the ability to migrate accounts across the two platforms until now.
To work, Bounce uses technology first developed for Bridgy Fed, a tool that connects Mastodon and Bluesky by making users’ profiles on one service visible on the other.
To move accounts, Bounce first moves a user’s Bluesky account to a bridged account that straddles the two networks, then to the user’s Mastodon account. This migration also supports Pixelfed, an Instagram-like social app that also runs on ActivityPub, like Mastodon.
At launch, Bounce can migrate users from Bluesky to Mastodon or Pixelfed, but not the other way around. That’s because Bluesky’s infrastructure currently only allows users to move off their servers, but doesn’t allow migrations back. When that changes, Bounce will launch migration in the opposite direction, too.
In addition, early adopters should be aware that once they move their account off of Bluesky, they won’t be able to use their Bluesky credentials to log into the app again or other AT Protocol-based services again.
Developed by a nonprofit called A New Social, which is also the maker of Bridgy Fed, Bounce’s launch is particularly timely for Bluesky users in Mississippi. On Friday, Bluesky announced that it would block its service in the state rather than comply with a new age assurance law that it considers overly invasive from a privacy standpoint and that would require too many resources for Bluesky’s small team to manage. This has left Bluesky users in the state without access to the social network, highlighting the need for tools that would allow users to take their accounts elsewhere.
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Bounce’s beta is available starting Monday and is aimed at early adopters and open web enthusiasts who are willing to try the service and offer feedback. While the service is open to the public, users should familiarize themselves with the migration process before making the commitment to move their accounts, given that it’s not yet possible to move back to Bluesky after they leave.
Get ready to rock out this summer with Lamb of God and Mastodon as they bring their Ashes of Leviathan Tour to Orlando.
The heavy twosome tour is a co-headlining trek named after and marking the 20th anniversary of their albums Ashes of the Wake and Leviathan. Both bands promise to play full-album sets.
The tour kicks off in mid-July in Texas, before heading to Florida for two shows — Jacksonville on July 23 and Orlando on July 24.
Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Lamb of God applies an extreme metal makeover to their heavenly name with songs like “Walk With Me in Hell” and “Laid to Rest.”
Tourmates Mastodon, from Atlanta, are far from extinct, with a discography of 14 albums stacked with heavy anthems like “Blood and Thunder” and “Oblivion.”
The two bands bring their co-headlining tour to the Orlando Amphitheater, accompanied by special guests Kerry King and Malevolence on Wednesday, July 24.
Our goal is to combine both approaches—to run a moderation service that tries to provide a baseline and to also have an open ecosystem where anyone who wants to innovate can come in and start building. I think this is particularly useful around cases where information is really fast moving and there’s specialized knowledge. There are organizations out there already in the business of fact-checking, or figuring out if a verified account is actually a politician or not. They can start annotating and putting that information into the network, and we can build off that collective intelligence.
Recently there was a very high-profile incident on X where deepfake porn of Taylor Swift started spreading and the platform was not super prompt at clamping down. What’s your approach to moderating deepfakes?
From the start we’ve been using some AI-detection services—image labeling services—but this is an area where there’s a lot of innovation and we’ve been looking at other alternatives.
This is also where a third-party labeling system could really come into use. We can move faster as an open collective of people—she has lots of fans who could help identify content like this very proactively.
What are the benefits of federation—where a social network is decentralized, consisting of a bunch of independent servers instead of one central hub—for the casual internet user?
The goals here are to give developers the freedom to build, and users the right to leave. The ability for people to host their own data means that users always have other alternatives, and that their experience doesn’t have to just come from us. For example, if a user wants to try a wholly different app, or a whole different experience, or they want to move to a parallel social network.
If someone was to use your protocol and build, say, a Taylor Swift deepfake porn community, is there anything you could do to stop that?
With the open web model, someone can always put their own website on the internet, but it doesn’t have to be indexed. We’re also playing a role in surfacing and indexing content. For really bad stuff out there, we’re trying to make sure that it never gets shown, by de-promoting it and not connecting to it.
Can you explain your business model?
We really think that money follows value. There’s been skepticism that this whole model of social can work. People are even wondering what it is. So, first of all, we’re trying to prove that this ecosystem has value to users and developers, and that it can kick off an era of open innovation.
From there, we’re going to monetize while following our values. Early on, Twitter was very open and everyone built on it. But then they shut down at some point, right? They turned into much more of a platform, and less something that looked like a protocol.
Our whole approach is getting back to protocols, not platforms, and there are certain guarantees that we’ve built into the protocol. It’s locked open. Once we have proven out this approach, I think there’s lots of ways that money is going to flow through the ecosystem. We’re going to start exploring some of those models this year.
There’s a new social network in town, and it’s coming for Twitter.
Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Mastodon Social — a decentralized text-based social media platform where people can chat in interest groups or “servers” — reached a new 2.5 million monthly user milestone in the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
According to a blog post written by the platform’s founder Eugen Rochko, the network “recently exploded in popularity;” it had just 300,000 monthly users in October.
“We are excited to see Mastodon grow and become a household name in newsrooms across the world, and we are committed to continuing to improve our software to face up to new challenges that come with rapid growth and increasing demand,” Rochko wrote in the post.
Mastodon’s sudden growth came as Musk purchased Twitter in October and took the company private. Since then, he’s tried to implement several controversial changes, including banning accounts (including those of journalists) that link to competitors like Mastodon. According to CNN, the policy was suspended less than 24 hours after it was enacted following accusations that Musk was walking back on his stance on free speech.
“This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say while holding your social graph hostage,” Rochko wrote in his blog post. “At Mastodon, we believe that there doesn’t have to be a middleman between you and your audience and that journalists and government institutions especially should not have to rely on a private platform to reach the public.”
It’s unclear how many Twitter users have left the platform since Musk’s takeover — the company hasn’t released any new metrics since July. It reported 238 million monetizable daily users at that time.
However, several notable figures have announced their departures from the app as a result of Musk’s leadership, including Elton John, Jim Carrey and Shonda Rhimes.
All my life I’ve tried to use music to bring people together. Yet it saddens me to see how misinformation is now being used to divide our world.
I’ve decided to no longer use Twitter, given their recent change in policy which will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked.
I’m leaving Twitter, but 1st here’s a cartoon I made with my friend Jimmy Hayward. It’s based on my painting of a crazy old Lighthouse Keeper, standing naked in a storm, summoning the angels and shining his lamp to guide us through a treacherous night. I love you all so much! ;^j pic.twitter.com/Cqmp74A87r
Paul Graham, a widely respected venture capitalist who’s been supportive Elon Musk’s efforts at Twitter, had his Twitter account suspended on Sunday.
The suspension followed a tweet in which Graham wrote: “This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.”
In that tweet, he linked to a new Twitter policy that forbids users from linking out to competing social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post, and Nostr.
That policy also forbids using various ways to get around the rule, such as writing “instagram dot com/username” to avoid creating an actual link.
It appears Graham’s account was suspended because he wrote, “You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.” That could be deemed by Twitter as an example of a workaround.
Fortune reached out to Twitter but didn’t receive an immediate reply; however, after we reached out to the company, Graham’s account was unsuspended.
Technology author Gergely Orosz noted the suspension on his own Twitter account, writing, “Paul Graham – founder of Y Combinator, and someone who was supportive of Elon Musk since the Twitter takeover – announced he’s taking a break from Twitter, and suggested people can find his Mastodon account on his website. He was banned a few hours later. I cannot believe it…”
Howard Lerman, a co-founder of several tech startups, also expressed surprise, tweeting: “Paul Graham (formerly @paulg) defines literally every attribute one could hope for on a social network: Profound, civil, thoughtful, honest, direct, polite, active, responsive to all, inclusive. I’m sure I missed a lot of things he is. And I’m really going to him him on here.”
Over on Mastodon, widely considered an alternative to Twitter for users tired of Musk’s chaos, Graham himself remained characteristically diplomatic, writing: “I haven’t ‘left Twitter.’ I just don’t want to keep using it while it’s banning links to other sites. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn more about Mastodon.”
He added, “FWIW I still hope Elon succeeds with Twitter. Why wish failure on anyone? But for me, not letting people post links to their other accounts was just too much.”
Others commented on the suspension as well. Alexis Ohanian, founder and general partner of VC firm 776, noted Graham’s stature as Silicon Valley “royalty.” He tweeted Sunday: “Wild. @PaulG got suspended (for *sending folks to his website for a link to his mastadon). This is gonna get really, really interesting. PG is SV royalty.”
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Elon Musk’s Twitter abruptly banned the accounts of one of its competitors and more than a half dozen tech journalists on Thursday night. Musk suggested that the users were banned because they shared information about the @ElonJet account that tracks the movements of Musk’s private jet, which the Twitter CEO claims threatens his safety.
The first account Twitter suspended on Thursday was from Mastodon, a Twitter rival that has grown in popularity since Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The Mastodon account had just touted that @ElonJet had joined its platform after Twitter banned the account for violating a hastily-introduced rule against sharing someone’s location.
Who did Twitter suspend?
Twitter then suspended the accounts of reporters from outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN and several independent journalists. The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, independent journalist Aaron Rupar and commentator Keith Olbermann were among those suspended. Some of the journalists shared that they had been suspended permanently. One common thread among those banned is that they regularly report on Twitter and Musk and had shared news about @ElonJet’s suspension from Twitter and its re-emergence on Mastodon.
Sources at Twitter say they didn’t know why these suspensions were happening. “All these decisions are hidden now,” one employeesaid, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not permitted to speak to the press. “Elon is paranoid. So much for full transparency.”
Why did Twitter suspect tech journalists?
On Thursday evening, Musk implied on Twitter that at least some journalists had been banned for reporting @ElonJet’s presence on Mastodon. “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” Musk tweeted.
The New York Times called the suspension of its tech reporter Ryan Mac “questionable and unfortunate,” and said the paper hadn’t received any explanation for the suspension.
CNN said the bans were “impulsive and unjustified,” and warned that “Twitter’s increasing instability should be of incredible concern for anyone that uses the platform,” in a statement Thursday evening.
“We will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk. We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts,” Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, told The Vergein an emailed statement.
What is Twitter’s ‘doxxing‘ policy?
The mass suspensions are the latest development in a debate on Twitter about “doxxing,” or the sharing of private information on a public social media account, often to encourage harassment.
On Wednesday, Twitter introduced a new rule that banned users from sharing “live location information” on the platform. Twitter banned @ElonJet, which used publicly-available flight information to share the location of Musk’s private jet, the same day. (Musk had earlier pledged to keep the tracker on Twitter to show his “commitment to free speech.”)
Musk claimed on Twitter that accounts sharing someone’s location in real-time were a security threat, and that he would be taking legal action against Jack Sweeney, the person behind the @ElonJet account.
In that same thread, Musk posted a video of someone he alleged was stalking a car carrying his son X AE A-XII. “Anyone recognize this person or car?” Musk tweeted, showing the vehicle’s license plate. (Users noted that, by sharing the car’s license plate, the Twitter CEO was himself ‘doxxing’ someone.)
The Los Angeles Police Department said it was “aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk,” though “no crime reports have been filed yet,” CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan tweeted on Thursday evening. O’Sullivan’s account was suspended soon after.
Additional reporting by Kylie Robison.
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