Over a million people use Mastodon every month, the decentralized social network that many people consider to be the best Twitter alternative.
Eugene Roshko, the platform's CEO and lead developer, made the announcement in a post on the network. Since Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter on October 27, nearly half a million new users have joined the network.
Although the achievement announced by Mastodon represents only a small portion of Twitter's 238 million daily active users, the network's user growth rate is on a steep upward trajectory, with the network recording 60-80 new users per hour prior to 27 October, and now thousands of users are logged in per hour.
The controversial new ownership of Twitter, and recent changes in the network, contributed to the increase in the number of Mastodon users, with some users saying that they switched to Mastodon due to concerns about the change in the user experience in Twitter under Musk, while others joined as a form of protest against the availability of The blue verification mark, which was once the preserve of celebrities and politicians, per user for a payment of $8 per month.
Mastodon offers an experience very similar to Twitter, with features such as: hashtags, replies, bookmarking, and a Twitter-like retweet boost. But unlike Twitter, the network is ad-free, distributed across thousands of servers organized by interests and geographic regions, and is largely run by volunteers who join their individual systems together in a union.
When Mastodon users log in and choose a server via the web or mobile devices, they can exchange posts and links with others on their own server, as well as with users on other servers across the network.
Each server can choose to restrict or filter types of unwanted content, such as harassment and gratuitous violence, while users on any server can block others and report them to those responsible.
Mastodon, which was established in 2016 and is headquartered in Germany, is not subject to any central entity. It is supported by crowdfunding and a small grant from the European Commission.
No server owner can enforce their will or shut down the network, but server owners can easily cut ties with any server that adopts policies they deem to be too extreme.
It is believed that decentralized design has the added benefit of reducing the cost of overhead, and making it impossible for any one individual or entity to gain access to the network.
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