What is Mastodon? Everything you need to know about the social media platform

After Musk's takeover of Twitter, users are looking for an alternative microblogging platform. Several users have already migrated to Koo, Reddit and Tumblr, which could be the alternatives to Twitter. However, a decentralized social media platform called Mastodon is grabbing everyone's attention. Let's know more about decentralized platforms Mastodon, what is it and how is it similar or different to Twitter. 

What is Mastodon?

Essentially, Mastodon is a decentralized social network that allows users to create their own servers, instead of a parent server that is owned by the platform or a company. For instance, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are centralized in a way that there is a leadership that decides what will be the future of the platform, features to be launched and so on. However, platforms like MInds, Aether and Mastodon run on independent servers and are based on open-source algorithms. 

Since people are sceptical about Musk's decisions related to the future of Twitter and free speech, they are looking for decentralized alternatives and Mastodon is one of them. Like Minds is an alternative to Facebook and Aether is an alternative to Reddit, Mastodon has emerged as a popular alternative to the microblogging platform Twitter. In many ways, both Twitter and Mastodon share some similarities.  

How is Mastodon similar to Twitter?

On Mastodon, instead of Tweet, users have 'toots' with a character limit of 500. Additionally, users can follow other users, on Twitter. Apart from this, the platform allows users to create their own networks, also called 'instances' on the platform. Users can select which network or 'instance' they want to be a part of the platform, giving them more control over the platform. However, users can communicate with users from other servers as well, even after joining a particular server. 

When users share their thoughts on the platform, they can do so in three different privacy settings direct, private and public. The concept of public toots and private toots is similar to that on other platforms like Instagram - public toots are visible to everyone on the platform and private toots are visible to followers only. Additionally, Mastodon also has anti0abuse tools to protect users. For more details about the platform, users should visit the official website - https://joinmastodon.org/. Like with other social media platforms, users have to try the platform to get a hang of it.