In the two weeks since billionaire Elon Musk took control of social media platform Twitter, perhaps the most unexpected outcome has been the rocketing growth of Mastodon, the non-commercial, but Twitter-like, social media platform run entirely by volunteers and supported through crowd-funded donations.
Rather than one huge centralised platform, Mastodon consists of smaller, independently-run and moderated communities (called instances) that link up, or “federate”, into one enormous but decentralised community. Since Musk’s takeover at Twitter, the once-tiny Irish Mastodon instance, Mastodon.ie has grown from a few hundred members to over 13,000, a growth rate mirrored in many other countries.
While it is far too soon to know if Mastodon will continue to thrive, much less grow to become a significant challenger to Twitter, its immediate, unexpected success is significant. Although many of the internet’s early online communities, from email lists to discussion boards, were similarly non-commercial and run by volunteers, today’s big platforms are commercial, advertising-driven giants which profit from the personal information shared by users. Their structure and inscrutable algorithms nudge users towards behaviours that quietly maximise company profits, but can unfortunately also facilitate social media’s worst excesses: outrage, hateful speech, disinformation and conspiracy-mongering.
If a growing number of people decide a non-commercial, less confrontational environment suits them fine, commercial platforms could face a serious challenge. Mastodon is just one piece of a larger “fediverse” of federated services that offer non-commercial alternatives to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and more.
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Offering all of this successfully at a global scale would be challenging. But perhaps independent alternatives to commercial behemoths can indeed have mass appeal, offering a glimpse of the potential for data surveillance-free social media environments where communities are
