Since Elon Musk took the reins at Twitter last week, things at the company have been more than a little chaotic, with mass layoffs, planned fees for verification on the platform, and Musk’s provocative political views. Lots of Twitter users are looking for an alternative, and an open source platform called Mastodon is benefiting, and experiencing a lot of growing pains.
Tech expert Omar Gallaga told Texas Standard that it’s unclear how many people have actually left Twitter, and so far, only a fraction of these have actually started using Mastodon. Listen to the segment in the player above.
Highlights from this segment:
– Mastodon users connect to a specific server, which is then connected to the rest of the community. It’s what’s called a “federated” model.
– Many Mastodon servers, which have provided community for small groups of users for several years, are now overloaded with new members.
– Some celebrities have left Twitter – a few moving to Mastodon instead.