in disarray since the world’s richest person took control of it last week, Mastodon, a decentralized, open alternative from privacy-obsessed Germany, has seen a flood of new users.. But many free-speech advocates reacted with dismay to the prospect of the world’s “town square” being controlled by one person and started looking for other options.
People swap posts and links with others on their own server – or Mastodon “instance” – and also, almost as easily, with users on other servers across the growing network. Before Musk completed the Twitter acquisition on Oct. 27, Mastodon’s growth averaged 60-80 new users an hour, according to the widely-cited Mastodon Users account. It showed 3,568 new registrations in one hour on Monday morning.
Mastodon’s advocates say its decentralized approach makes it fundamentally different: rather than go to Twitter’s centrally-provided service, every user can choose their own provider, or even run their own Mastodon instance, much as users can e-mail from Gmail or an employer-provided account or run their own e-mail server.
“If you don’t like Twitter any more there is awesome site called Masterbatedone,” he wrote in a swiftly deleted tweet above a screenshot of Krugman’s misfired toots. Authorities should move to the federal government’s own Mastodon instance, he says. The European Commission also maintains a server for European Union bodies to toot from.
Not too surprising the left want to control the narrative somewhere else now that both left and right, and even centrists like me, are allowed a voice in Twitter. I can respect and disagree at the same time. 🤓
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