After SpaceX founder Elon Musk officially took over Twitter, thousands of people have been signing up to a small social network called Mastodon.
Musk, who paid a whopping $44billion (£38bn) for the social media platform, has axed staff, suggested they will charge for verification status and is reportedly considering a number of other drastic changes.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of Musk’s Twitter takeover has been Mastodon, which saw over 230,000 new users join last week.
The social network has been around since 2016, and currently has over 863,000 monthly active users.
READ MORE: Elon Musk gets into bizarre spat with Hollywood A-lister who begs him 'get off Twitter'
But what exactly is it, and how is it different to Twitter? Here Daily Star takes a closer look.
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon is a non-profit company that was started in 2016 by Eugen Rochko because he was unhappy with the state and direction of Twitter.
He wanted to build a “user-friendly microblogging product that would not belong to any central authority”.
Mastodon is a decentralised, or open source social network, which means there is no server, company, organisation or individual running it.
Similar to Twitter and Tumblr, users are able to create profiles, post messages and follow other users.
In an explainer video, Mastodon explains how messages “follow a 500 character limit and are displayed in a chronological order”.
Instead of a Tweet, users of Mastodon have “toots”.
Mastodon also has vigorous privacy and anti-abuse tools to help moderate servers.
How does Mastodon work?
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Normally, a company would have full control over a whole platform, however, on Mastodon anyone can create and run their own server.
Mastodon isn’t a single website – it has many different servers which users can sign up to.
Anyone can create their own version of Mastodon, or server, with their own set of rules – this is called an “instance”.
Mastodon explained: “All instances are owned, operated and moderated by the community that creates them, and not some large corporation which tracks your data to sell to advertisers.
“In most cases, Mastodon instances are crowdfunded, not financed.”
Users can choose to follow other users within the instance they created or belong to, but also within other instances.
That means that although each Mastodon instance is privately operated, users can still communicate with members from other servers.
How to join Mastodon
First, head on over to the Mastodon website to join and make an account.
You have to decide which server you want to make an account on. If you find a different server you prefer you can easily move your profile.
You can find a server by searching through topics and languages, and you’ll find categories like Technology, Music, Gaming and Art.
You can for example find a kpop.social server which is for Kpop fans, or a tech.lgbt server, which is for people who work in tech who are “LGBTQIA+ or allies”.
The most popular server is the mastodon.social, which has around 126,000 active users.
Keep in mind that some servers have waiting lists, while others you can join straight away.
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