A funny thing happened over the weekend. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave an interview to CNN in which he said his platform had what he called a "more left-leaning" bias, a puzzling statement that only added to his recent concessions to the far right—from apologizing to conservative activist Candace Owens to protecting Alex Jones and his company InfoWars.

That same day, Eugen Rochko, the developer behind Twitter competitor Mastodon, was taking an entirely different tack. Asked by a Mastodon user why his network was silencing “alt-right” groups, Rochko made his position perfectly clear.



“Nazis are bad and I don’t want to give them a platform for recruiting,” he said. When this person pressed him—in frustrating troll fashion—about the specific meaning of the word Nazi, he doubled down. “That bullshit doesn't work on me man.”

For some long-time Twitter users, who've watched the platform warp into a breeding ground for trolls and bad faith, right wing ideologues, this interaction may be all the inspiration needed to finally jump ship.

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Mastodon launched in beta nearly two years ago, but a spate of media attention piqued people’s curiosity about the platform in April 2017. I signed up at the time and immediately found it confusing, and worse, under populated. You can’t have a social media platform without the ability to socialize.

Fast forward to this summer, when exasperation with Twitter seemed to reach a boiling point: The platform refused to ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, despite nearly every other major tech platform doing so, and instead issued a meaningless suspension. At the same time, actresses including Kelly Marie Tran, Daisy Ridley, and Ruby Rose publicly deleted their social media presences after abuse and harassment from racist and misogynistic online trolls. It's no surprise that large numbers of people are finally warming to the idea that they can probably do better.

Eugen Rochko, founder of Mastodon. Courtesy

Mastodon has seen 80,000 new members join in the last week alone, bringing the total up to around 1.5 million, according to Rochko, who spoke to me by phone from Germany where he lives. It's a far cry from Twitter’s 336 million reported monthly active users, but a start nonetheless.

Despite the slight learning curve it took to regain my bearings when I logged back onto Mastodon last week, the platform has become a must-check in my daily social media routine. While it looks almost exactly like Twitter—even replicating Tweetdeck's columned layout—the feel is distinctly different, like putting a favorite pair of pants on inside out. For one thing, there’s no one telling me I’m a piece of shit on there. At least, not yet.

"It's Just Plain Nicer."

Everyone on Mastodon seems to follow back, and as such there’s little competition, or brand-building, or brands at all for that matter. People tend to mark anything remotely sensitive in nature with content warnings, even political posts that would pass as exceptionally innocent on Twitter. (Posts are called “toots” here, by the way, which sounds silly, but it’s not like “tweet” is a particularly serious term, and we all went along with that.) You can’t search for keywords, meaning it’s a lot harder for Gamergaters or MAGA chuds to track down people to harass, and there’s no quote-tweet function, a key tool for fighting on Twitter.

For one thing, there’s no one telling me I’m a piece of shit on there. At least, not yet.

“I think the way quotes are used on Twitter is bad for the mental health of everyone involved,” said Rochko. “It motivates you not to have a conversation with somebody but at somebody. It also makes you push problematic content further. When you comment on how bad it is, you spread it.”

Mastodon, for the most part, is simply people talking to one another. What a concept. But not everyone is convinced that the concept is built to last.

“I’ve seen a lot of folks on mastodon jubilant over the absence of nazis and TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists], which is admittedly a good thing,” Twitter user @muhmentions, also of the Mic Dicta podcast, told me via direct message. “It will be interesting to see how sticky it is once the novelty factor wears off.”

Aside from banning Nazis, the thing that differentiates Mastodon the most from Twitter are what's called "instances," or, in other words, a channel dedicated to a single topic or community. Twitter is one giant space where everyone congregates. Mastodon, which is open-source, meaning the code behind the platform is available to the public, is broken up into different instances maintained by any individual that wants to run one.

It could be an instance focused on LGBTQ issues (members of those communities were early adopters, as it felt like a safer space than Twitter). There could be an instance focused on anime, or gaming, or sharing your artwork. One of the more popular instances is one populated by sex workers, who migrated to the site when they were chased off of other platforms earlier this year.

Rochko’s Mastodon profile. Screenshot via Mastodon

Users have to create new accounts to join each individual instance, which can be frustrating. But because they're smaller, they can be moderated more strictly. That means, as Rochko explained to the Nazi interlocutor last weekend, people can be more swiftly shown the door. My instance, my rules. In short, it’s a lot like self-selecting communities of the internet of yore, like chatrooms or message boards, each with its own set of standards and particular areas of interest.

As a woman who goes by @karengeier on both Twitter and Mastodon told me, “It’s just plain nicer. You feel like you can be wholesome and make dumb jokes on there and no one’s going to bust you on it.”

Not the First Mass Exit

In some ways, it’s the reverse of the migration to Gab, the social network embraced by the alt-right.

When people leave Twitter because of a controversial moment—like its refusal to ban Alex Jones—they're making a statement or demand that they want better curated online communities, according to Twitter user @pharmasean, who's familiar with both Gab and Mastodon but remains an active user on Twitter.

“Gab claims to be a ‘free speech’ community, but they are really hoping to be a space to bitch about SJWs [social justice warriors] freely in a space unpopulated by SJWs," @pharmasean explained. "The exit to Mastodon similarly is a demand for a more curated space that is free from alt righters and Nazis.”

That’s no small part of it, Rochko agrees, but it’s not all of it.

“I was a Twitter user for a long time, and I really like the format,” said Rochko. “I wanted to continue using the same format, but I wanted it to be intimate and for other people to have more control.”

He also wanted to remove the commercialization that has plagued social media networks. There are no ads or brands vying for your attention in the space. As such, there’s no incentive for him or others to keep people addicted to the platform to maximize revenue, or to mess with the chronology to increase engagement. And as Twitter (and media in general) understands all too well, one of the best ways to keep users engaged is by stoking conflict. Consider Twitter's 21 percent increase in revenue in the first quarter of 2018.

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We didn’t suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday. We know that’s hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does. And we’ll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment by ensuring tweets aren’t artificially amplified. — jack (@jack) August 8, 2018

The surge in users Mastodon has seen this week is part of cyclical pattern, Rochko said. Whenever frustration with Twitter explodes, people tend to come over to see what it’s all about. This time may be different. A number of people believe Dorsey's attitude towards white supremacists is too soft—that it's even welcoming. White supremacists, for instance, continue to get verified on the platform while people who say "fuck Nazis" are banned frequently, according to Rochko.

“The refusal to ban [Alex] Jones was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

Whenever Rochko does go to Twitter, he sees people constantly complaining about it but not leaving. “The idea is they'll complain and Twitter will listen, it will become better. At this point it seems like it’s not going to change or get better, so sticking around doesn’t make sense anymore.”

Mastodon: The Twitter-Killer?

Whether that amounts to a large-scale abandoning of Twitter or not remains to be seen.

"The exit to Mastodon similarly is a demand for a more curated space that is free from alt righters and Nazis."

“It's not a tipping point for Twitter,” guessed Twitter user @drasticactionSA, who's also on Mastodon. “Mastodon's existence is essential, same as [hypothetical Facebook alternative] Diaspora. There will be a set of users that will use it, and be very happy. Hell, I enjoy shitposting there right now. It’s fun! It's like early Twitter. But this isn't a turning point.”

“As rotten as Twitter can be with the weirdos and extremists, and as poorly run as it seems to be, I wouldn't be penning its obituary just yet,” added @muhmentions. “I have endless faith, at least as an American, in our capacity to enthusiastically consume garbage.”

Alex Goldman, of the Reply All podcast, shares in their skepticism.

“I think it's a net negative for the internet, but it appears that we as users want consolidation. It's easy to find all of our relatives on Facebook. It's easy to find all our favorite celebs on Twitter. All our information on Google," he said. "But Mastodon seems to be broken up into niches, and that doesn't hold the appeal. Even though I honestly miss those cultural internet niches.”

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Small, moderate communities were always better for the internet, said Goldman, but those communities never scaled. That’s fine by Rochko; he promised he would never get rich off of Mastodon, and he couldn’t even if he wanted. The open-source, decentralized nature of it prevents that.

I asked him whether or not he thought Twitter and Mastodon could co-exist.

“Well, they're co-existing right now, so they can,” he said. “The question is: Should they? And should one win? I’m a bit biased. I think that Mastodon should.”

I don’t think I want him to be right. I’m mad at Twitter right now, but I still want it to come out intact in the end. I just want it to be a little more like, well, Mastodon.

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