What is a mastodon? How did Mastodon become popular? We answer for you.
Immediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter, the Mastodon platform began to gather a large audience with the slogan 'social network not for sale'.
Eugen Rochko (born 1993) is a German software developer, best known as the original creator of the distributed open-sourced microblogging service Mastodon, a decentralized federated social network platform with "stringent anti-abuse and anti-discrimination policies". Rochko was born in a Jewish family of Russian origin, and moved to Germany at the age of eleven. He attended the grammar school in Jena and studied computer science at Friedrich-Schiller University, a public university in Jena. In his youth he was active on networks such as MySpace, schülerVZ [de], Facebook, Twitter, and ICQ.
Founded in 2016, Mastodon is known for having a user interface very similar to Twitter. It provides services through both mobile applications and websites.
It is operated by a non-profit organization led by its founder, Eugen Rochko, and is crowdfunded. It is also a free and ad-free platform.
There was a great migration to Mastodon, with Elon Musk's announcement that a monthly fee will be charged from approved accounts.
Mastodon, which has existed for about 7 years, suddenly gained popularity. Of course, Elon Musk has a big share in this.
Mastodon has reached almost half a million new users in the last two weeks. We can say that it has started to become one of the most popular social media platforms for downloads. Considering that Twitter has 238 million daily users, there is actually a long way to go. However, this seems like a good start.
Currently, the servers have their own moderation rules and some have almost no rules at all.
Some servers are full of bots or contain a lot of hateful content and may block other servers from connecting to them. This means that they will not appear on servers where they are blocked.
Only server owners can delete hate speech or illegal content. However, the fact that it was deleted on a server does not mean that it was deleted everywhere.
In short, if this platform continues to grow, it will become a big problem in terms of personality rights, hate speech, slander, insults and more. There is already information that people are being targeted with racist and homophobic hate content.
Therefore, it is normal for new people signing up to be a little confused at first because after signing up with Mastodon, you also need to sign up on a 'server' of your choice.
This server can be a local group, a group used by users in your country, or a group related to your area of interest. Since it is decentralized, there are many servers, but you can also access the contents of servers other than the server you registered with.
The activity of the platform, which has existed for 6 years, is unprecedented. Problems may arise due to the technical load created by new participants.
No ads, but nothing to stop you from writing a post promoting your company or product.
The paid membership part depends a bit on which server you are on. Some servers demand payment for their costs. Some continue with voluntary donations. However, the platform can be called largely free.
Thousands Have Joined Mastodon Since Twitter Changed Hands. Its Founder Has a Vision for Democratizing Social Media
https://time.com/6229230/mastodon-eugen-rochko-interview/
https://mastodon.social/explore