A lot of people are looking for a Twitter alternative these days. It’s no secret that social media has had a lot of shakeups since Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter. But with popular journalists and tech enthusiasts becoming unsatisfied with some of the changes being made at the company, many have been asking what Twitter alternatives are out there that are worth getting into.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the social media room
One popular Twitter alternative that seems to have caught a majority of those exiting Twitter is Mastodon, a federated micro-blogging platform that anyone can host. If you’re not sure what that means, don’t worry. We’ll dive into each part now so you know what you might be getting into with Mastodon.
What is a federation?
One word that gets thrown around a lot when researching this Twitter alternative is “federation.” But what exactly does that mean? As we said before, anyone can host their own instance of Mastodon if they have a server, and have people sign up for accounts there on a custom URL. But that doesn’t help if most people are on another Mastodon server somewhere else, does it?
This is part of the issue federation hopes to address. Using a popular built-in protocol, any Mastodon server can interact with any others and allow users to even follow other accounts on different servers. Alternatively, each server can choose to block, or “defederate”, servers with users or content they don’t want to interact with. Which can be helpful if you don’t want to see troll posts or adult content. This is what we mean when we say Mastodon is a “federated” Twitter alternative. If you want a quick and easy way to your friends from Twitter who have moved over regardless of server, check out services like MoveToDon. They should make the process a lot easier.
Mastodon gives many a familiar feeling
Aside from that, using Mastodon can feel a whole lot like using Twitter from day to day. It’s just a matter of picking a server that’s right for you. If you want to keep a backup of your Twitter history though, there are guides out there to show you how regardless of which of the up-and-coming Twitter alternatives you decide to go with.
YouTube: What is Mastodon?
Photo credit: The feature image is symbolic and has been done by Rafael Henrique.
