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After the billionaire Elon Musks roughly $44 billion bid to buy Twitter, people are looking for its alternatives and the Mastodon Social Network comes on the top. This decentralized social network running using instances (communities) is now trending on Twitter and it has even launched an Android app recently to welcome the flocks of users.

But, what exactly is the Mastodon Social Network? Who owns and runs it? If it is worth switching over and leaving Twitter? Well discuss that here. You will also understand why Mastodons name is on the top of the Twitter alternatives despite being the opposite of it.

Also, Mastodon Social Network isnt a newly launched fad eating up on the recent hype of Musks deal with Twitter. It has been here for a long time, since late-2016, and revolutionized the way social networking works. However, people rarely get a hold of its core idea.

Mastodon Social Network is a free and open-source platform founded in October 2016, by Eugen Rochko, a German developer. It runs self-hosted social networking services and has microblogging features like Twitter, and they are offered by a large number of Mastodon nodes called Instances which run independently.

An individual who joins Mastodon Social Network joins a specific Instance that is capable of interoperating with other instances as part of a federated social network allowing users on different nodes to interact with each other.

You can understand instances (communities or nodes) like the various Sub-reddits on Reddit that are each dedicated to a specific topic. However, Reddit still owns them and can moderate them whenever needed. Whereas, in Mastodons case, all the instances are independent, dedicated to a specific topic or community like LGBTQ+, Art, Music, Region, etc, and cant be controlled by a single entity.

If you are a business or an organization, you can host your own social media platform on your own infrastructure based on Mastodon Social Network. This will help you operate your community in a decentralized manner, and it will not depend on any single company.

Mastodon Social Network works as a part of the Fediverse, which is the ensemble of federated or interconnected server platforms used for sharing content and allowing users to interact which other without having to sign up for separate accounts for each server.

They are like email, where you can communicate with Gmail, Yahoo!, Rediff Mail, or any other email client. However, your account wont be owned and controlled by anyone else. You are the owner of your content, actions, and words. The instance you are a part of is still managed by the admins of the community.

The founder, Eugen Rochko believes that small and closely related communities manage unwanted behavior more effectively than a large companys small safety team. Mastodon even allows users to block and report other users to administrators.

You can either join Mastodon Social Network as an individual or as an organization/community. When joining as an individual, you only need to join an instance, which is an individual server run by an organization or community. It is just like signing up with an email address or joining a Sub-reddit.

You will have to start the process by finding the right instance for your interest, or you can simply join the one for your region, interest, or the globally popular one. Well help you choose the right instance in the next section of this post.

If you are an organization, you can install Mastodon on a Ubuntu cloud server. After that, youll have to learn to expand your Mastodon Fediverse Network. You can also integrate it into WordPress or any other web application that you manage. Youll be the owner of your social network.

Mastodon is not a single site but a collection of many. Thus, joining it can be a bit complicated for some users as they just couldnt figure out which would be the right instance for them. The core website, joinmastodon.org, lists several communities or instances, but they present only the ones that are committed to active moderation against hate.

The largest of these instances is Mastodon.online, which is run by the developers of the Mastodon Social Network. You can start by joining it if you are confused about which instance to join.

There wouldnt be any problem later on as Mastodon allows smoothly moving your account to a different instance, and you can interact with users on other instances without having to even move over.

There is an unofficial directory, Instances.social, which holds a collection of around 2,500 instances or communities based on varying interests and themes. You can go through the list and find the perfect one for you. When you dont join any, Mastodon serves only the Japanese cat videos or mostly the content in other languages on the home feed.

Some controversial Mastodon instances include Sinblr, where previous Tumblr amateur porn creators reside, Dolphin.Town, where every post must contain only the letter e, Fosstodon, the community for open-source software enthusiasts, and Gab, where users post an extreme amount of hate content without much moderation.

Yes, Mastodon Social Network is now available on both Android and iOS devices. The iOS client launched in July 2021 to expand the network to more users. You can find it on the App Store for your iPhone and iPad.

Recently, Mastodon Social Network also launched an Android application in April 2022 to welcome the users coming after Elon Musks controversial bid to buy Twitter at the price of $54.2 per share. You can find the Mastodon app for Android in the Play Store.

Mastodon Social Network presents to you an actual network of communities with varying interests and rules capable of communicating with each other. It allows you to consume content without any interruptions and there isnt an algorithm that decides what you see.

You will see the full content from the people you follow and the instance you are a part of. It doesnt register your clicks, inputs, or any activity, unlike Facebook and Twitter. It is completely ad-free and doesnt want to sell you things. Also, your content is absolutely yours.

There is no centralized authority that decides what the users do on the platform. You are free to express yourself. There are instances that are generalized such as mastodon.social, mastodon.xyz, etc. And, there are instances dedicated to hardcore fans of something.

It offers a friendlier kind of social environment eliminating hateful, ugly, or influential content. There is no one controlling you. This serves as the major advantage of the network. However, it also comes with certain cons and the Gab community is the prime example.

If youll ask me, then you can definitely hop on the Mastodon ship and try it. However, you should only leave Twitter and completely switch to it once you get a complete hold of it. Mastodon is not for everyone, in my opinion. Its like the early days of the Internet, there is decentralization, there is no stalking, and people freely express themselves.

However, for casual users who do not wish to dive deep into the technology, it could be hard to understand. Mastodon still has a long way to go before competing with traditional social networks like Twitter and Facebook. They know how to retain users and make them addicted to their content, while Mastodon never tries it.

Mastodon Social Network is still far from competing with Twitter or any other traditional social media platform. It currently only has over 4.4 million users while Twitter has more than 217 million registered users. It is also not suitable for everyone, especially casual users.

We are not stating that its not good. Its amazing, in fact. There are zero ads, no one is treated in a special manner, and everyone is treated equally. There is no hate speech and harmful content, and there is complete decentralization. The community members control the instances.

However, casual users may find it hard to understand and may not understand the core concept behind decentralization. If you are able to figure it out, then you can definitely switch over and explore it for your purposes.

What do you think about it? Do find the Mastodon Social Network worth switching over to? Let us know in the comments section.

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Mastodon Social Network: Everything You Need to Know Before Switching - TheTealMango