Twitter Fumbles, Mastodon Rises To Tune Of 2.5 Million Monthly Users

If there’s one network that’s capitalizing on the fallout Twitter has been experiencing under Elon Musk, it’s Mastodon. The up-and-coming social media platform that many have flocked to reached a milestone of 2.5 million users in November. 

This achievement is a stark increase from where the site was just one month ago, when it only had an estimated 300,000 monthly active users, as revealed in the blog post by its founder Eugen Rochko. 

Rochko wrote that the @joinmastodon account has recently been suspended as part of Musk’s controversial policy, alongside multiple journalists from major news outlets who covered the popular network. 

In contrast, the new platform asserts it doesn’t impose “arbitrary and unfair” limits on its users. Rather, it enables there to be no need for a middleman between an individual and the audience, other journalists, or even government institutions. 

For example, Rochko pointed out that the German government or European Commission are allowed to run their own servers on the site to publish important information to the masses, while users get an additional choice of social media provider similar to that of a mobile phone plan. 

He credited this freedom as the reason for Mastodon’s spike in monthly active users, especially with more reporters, political figures, writers, celebrities, and institutions abandoning Twitter to move over to the network. 

“We are excited to see Mastodon grow and become a household name in newsrooms across the world, and we are committed to continuing to improve our software to face up to new challenges that come with rapid growth and increasing demand,” Rochko concluded. 

[via CNN and Mastodon, cover image via Rafael Henrique | Dreamstime.com]