BERLIN: Twitter users may be waiting with bated breath to find out exactly what the platform’s new owner Elon Musk has in store for it, and yet the vast majority are unaware of the budding rival Mastodon, according to a recent survey in Germany.
Some 80% of people in Germany have never heard of the decentralised and ad-free network, according to a representative survey by the market research institute YouGov, published at the end of October.
Only 4% in Germany already have an active Mastodon account, while 11% have heard of the platform but aren’t registered. A final 5% declined to give information.
In Germany, as in many other Western countries, a Twitter account is essential commodity to politicians, companies and celebrities, and yet some Twitter users have become worried about the takeover by the world’s richest person, who has promised fewer infringements on free speech and is considering additional charges for features.
Months ago, plans to take over Twitter by controversial US entrepreneur Elon Musk gave rise to discussions about alternatives, as Facebook once did with WhatsApp when it bought the messenger app.
However, several attempts to build a fully comprehensive Twitter alternative have already failed in the past. App.net – intended as a kind of Twitter with subscription fees – was discontinued in 2017 after five years.
In the case of WhatsApp, a major exodus of users and the rise of a number of viable alternatives nevertheless failed to bring despite all the excitement.
Mastodon, developed in Germany in 2016, has 5.7 million accounts so far, far fewer than the 217 million daily active users Twitter claimed in its apps and web version for 2021.
Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not a unified service, but consists of a decentralised network of different servers (currently around 3,800 instances).
As a Mastodon user, you can communicate with the members of all the other communities. However, the house rules are quite different on the various instances.
Instead of tweets, as on Twitter, they are called “toots”. Similar to Twitter, the length of a post is limited. The toots can be commented on, shared and favoured by users.
Source: The Star
