Twitter has undergone tremendous development since its inception. And this is because, although it does not seem so, more than 16 years have passed since his birth. all the while in which alternatives such as Mastodon have emerged, we have noticed changes at the technical level, in the operation of the service itself and also in the type of content we can find. And in my opinion, as a user who has been raining since 2008, I think that’s the change I’ve blamed the most, and sometimes I’m a little tired of Twitter.

Twitter has a problem with hate and fake news. The debate on freedom of expression is constantly repeated when we talk about this social network, in which we can see lies raised to the level of unquestionable truths, insults and disqualifications, personal attacks, slander campaigns and, in short, levels of polarization, which I personally find quite worrying.

However, it is true that we can also find sensational content, usually in the form of fibers. From aeronautics to gastronomy, from history to architecture and urbanism, from cleaning to cinema … the list is endless and a well-chosen food can offer us a lot and the other very little, almost zero. part of which is pushing more people every day to consider placing land among this social network.

Be that as it may, Every day there are several reasons to consider leaving Twitter (and of course other social networks) and many of them have less to do with network access than with its content, its principles, privacy risks, advertising, etc. And if this is your case and you still don’t know Mastodon, you should know that this alternative has long existed.

What is Mastodon?

Launched in October 2016, Mastodon is a microblogging social network, a description that may not relate to Twitter. And that’s not a coincidence, of course, because when we explore this social network, we see that Mastodon could fit perfectly as a Twitter clone, although it’s true that its visual appearance is more reminiscent of some account management applications and social networking services.

However that the initial similarity between Mastodon and Twitter shouldn’t confuse us, because as soon as we dive a little deeper, we find differences in both concept and operation. And it is in these differences that lies the reason why the jump was still not very large, but a growing number of users. Whether you exchange Twitter for Mastodon or use both at the same time, curiosity about this social network is growing.

The key difference between Twitter and Mastodon is that the latter is open source.. Unlike what happens to Twitter, any user who wishes can analyze the insides of Mastodon to see how it works. This presupposes a model of transparency that we are not used to with social networks and their algorithms, and it shows exactly the direction in which these services should go.

Another difference from Mastodon is that It is a decentralized network. It consists of multiple servers running in a certain way. This makes a very important difference, in that, unlike what happens on Twitter, users and content differ from one server to another. However, there are some linked servers (federated, in the jargon of this social network), so users who access one of them can see the contents of other Mastodon servers that are federated with it.

For those who still don’t know Mastodon, this is one of the best surprises this social network has to offer: mastodont has no advertisement. At the moment, however, it is important to take into account one nuance, and that is that there is nothing to prevent this from changing in the future. As I said, servers are run individually by their managers, so if one of them decides at some point to start placing advertising to cover server costs or make a profit, nothing but the exodus of users can prevent it.

Mastodon server types

We can focus on this point two classifications: by accessibility and by content. In the first point, Mastodon server administrators can grant free access to any interested user, who can then join them immediately, or force users to request group access that their administrators grant or not. As a general rule, it is understandable that open servers for general use usually have many more users than servers with limited access.

But don’t expect millions to find users in this regard. The most populous server on the web, mastodon.social, has almost 690,000 users. If we look at the server directory in search of the most populous in Spanish, we find mastodon.nobigtech with about 2,300 people. It may be a disadvantage for some, but we can also see it as an advantage, depending on what we are looking for on the social network.

Another classification of Mastodon servers is related to their content type, and that’s it we find quite a few thematic servers. These are the categories we can find in the Mastodon directory:

• General
• Regional
• Art
• Music
• Activism
• LGBTQ +
• Video game
• Technique
• Academic
• furry
• Food

General, as you can imagine, offers servers where you can talk about any topic, so it’s the category that most resembles Twitter.

Keep in mind that you’ve probably thought about it at Mastodon user accounts are limited to servers. In other words, if you want to attend several, you will have to register individually for each of them. The only “exception” in this regard, and this is only a partial exception, is on the federated servers, because access to one of them will allow you to see the contents of the rest.