Twitter users are joining Mastodon: What is it, Elon Musk’s reaction and more – Times of India

Elon Musk has been facing heat for the modifications he is bringing to Twitter. While some have been vocal against these changes, some have chosen to quit the platform. It has been seen that various celebrities are now moving to Mastodon, an alternative that looks like Twitter.
What is Mastodon
Mastodon, an open social media platform from Germany, and its founder Eugen Rochko have claimed that the platform has over one million monthly active users with more than 4,89,000 having joined since October 27. Mastodon looks a lot like Twitter wherein account holders can write posts (called “toots”), reply to, like and repost others’ toots as well as follow each other.
The main difference is the working of Mastodon. While Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk, Mastodon is basically a collection of different, independently run and self-funded servers. Rochko is reportedly the company’s only employee and the six-year-old platform doesn’t have the power to force any server to comply with any standards.
Who moderates Mastodon
As per a report by Time magazine, even though there is no single authority to enforce any rules, in practice, many of Mastodon’s servers have stricter rules than Twitter. The report says whenever hate-speech servers appear, other servers can band together to block them. “I guess you could call it the democratic process,” Rochko was quoted as saying.
Furthermore, owners of those servers can delete hate speech or illegal content. There are no advertisements on Mastodon but people can promote their businesses. The platform is free to use but some servers may ask for donations, as per a report by BBC.
How to join Mastodon
To join Mastodon, you have to choose a server, which could be based on a theme. The theme could be anything such as city, interest, social, technology, and gaming, among others. You can follow users on all the other servers.

How do you find people on Mastodon?
The server you choose becomes part of your user name. So if my name is XYZ and chose the UK server, the name will be @xyz@mastodonapp.uk. In case you want to find someone on Mastodon, type in their full name. If you are on the same server as the person you are finding, you can find him/ her by typing in the name, which is “XYZ” in this case.
Elon Musk mocks Mastodon
It seems users jumping ship hasn’t gone well with the Tesla CEO and he reportedly responded to it by tweeting a derogatory wordplay. Reports suggest that Musk deleted these tweets soon after posting them.
In his first tweet, Musk reportedly shared an image of Mastodon and tweeted, “If you don’t like Twitter anymore, there is an awesome site called Masterbatedone.” Then he replied to his own tweet saying, “Gee, I wonder why the screen is so dirty …” In a related tweet, he said, “What do you call someone who is a master at baiting?”
Celebrities including Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Amber Heard, Grey’s Anatomy producer Shonda Rhimes, supermodel Gidi Hadid, and Sara Bareilles are among others who have quit Twitter since Musk’s takeover.