The Twitter alternative - Mastodon

Mastodon is a decentralized open-network that aims to provide users with more control over their content

Following billionaire Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, the fiasco that followed prompted many longtime users to leave the social media platform. Many alternatives have since then been developed and gained momentum - including Jack Dorsey's BlueSky and Mastodon.

Quite similar to Twitter, I didn't seem to find much change in signing up or the interface of the app, which pretty much replicates Twitter features. Mastodon claims to be a decentralised open-source network that doesn't use an algorithm feed and sell its users' data, unlike Twitter.

Around 70,000 users quit Twitter for Mastodon, the platform has not become popular, partly due to its technical faults in the app, confusion on how it should be used and the small number of people that joined the network.

Though the platform has improved significantly over the year, with better performance and fixing many of its technical errors and glitches, many users still find it difficult to navigate and often leave the platform because of lack of known celebrities and personalities using the platoform.

I, for one, didn't have a hard time navigating, and neither was it confusing when it came to "tooting" a post instead of "tweeting" it. The options for the desired action that appear for posts on your feed are pretty much replicated from Twitter, though they may be called differently.

The platform is a host to a number of sites called servers or instances, which are providing content directly on Mastodon. When signing up, you can sign up to join different servers according to interests, including politics.

Being part of a community would mean you can message other community members and view content created revolving around the shared interest. Each server has its own rules and adds a part of it in your username like @mastodonapp.uk.

According to Mastodon, anyone can set up a server or instance and operate and manage the content on it, which will be referred to as a "federated one". Fediverse is a sum of all sites, and will appear under “federated timeline."

"Local Timeline" will display toots from your home server, while your Home Page will show content from the people you follow.

Though seemingly complicated, you can easily get the hang of the platform and begin using it instead of Twitter.

While still a great concept app, Mastodon has sadly lost much of its fervour, though initially launched in 2016, the platform only caught attention after Musk purchased Twitter.

With a bit of improvement, simplification of the app and more appreciation, more people will feel tempted to make the switch especially when Twitter has been criticised its users.