Mastodon Gains 30,000 New Users After Musk Buys Twitter
Social network Mastodon is reporting an influx of 30,000 new users in a single day after Twitter announced it would sell itself to Elon Musk.
According to Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko, the new sign-ups underscore the growth the decentralized social network has been experiencing ever since Musk expressed an interest in taking over Twitter.
Evidence is also emerging that some users are bailing on Twitter following the Musk acquisition. According to NBC News, high-profile Twitter accounts have been losing tens of thousands of followers due to "organic" account closures from users.
For example, former US President Barack Obama lost 300,000 followers after Twitter announced it was being sold to Musk. However, Twitter accounts belonging to Republican figures, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Ga.), have seen their follower counts increase by around 100,000.
Rochko said users are flocking to his service “because at Mastodon, we present a vision of social media that cannot be bought and owned by any billionaire.” But on the flip side, the surge in new users is causing technical snafus at Mastodon.
“Without doubt the sudden and explosive success is putting strain on our resources, specifically the public Mastodon servers that we, the non-profit, maintain ourselves: mastodon.social and mastodon.online,” he wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
“We have been working non-stop to maintain quality of service on mastodon.social and mastodon.online, but you may have noticed issues such as confirmation emails not arriving or home feeds being delayed,” he added. “We apologize for the inconvenience and continue to work on addressing these issues.”
Mastodon functions a lot like Twitter, but it operates as a decentralized social
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