Can Mastodon.social really dethrone Twitter?

We’ve been talking a lot about .SOCIAL domains lately, and how increasingly more people are choosing to use them as branded link shorteners to add a little more customization to their social media sites. But now, Mastodon.social is making headlines as news outlets claim that they’ve found the platform that will take down Twitter.

Twitter users are fleeing to Mastodon.social

Twitter has rolled out a series of unpopular updates over the past few months, and the constant barrage of hate speech and online bullying continues to be a serious problem on the platform. The Twitter team’s lack of action when it comes to combatting the racist, sexist, just plain ugly content that runs rampant on the site has made some users desperate for an alternative. Enter Mastodon.social, an open-source platform that’s forming a new community.

There are some key differences that set Mastodon.social apart from Twitter, including:

• A 500 character limit rather than Twitter’s 250
• The ability to make individual “toots” (the Mastodon version of a tweet) private
• Feeds that are in chronological order, rather than being selected by an algorithm as with a recent Twitter update that’s reminiscent of Facebook.
• The ability for anyone to host their own instance of Mastodon, which Mastodon.social works to connect in the backend.

Why Twitter is probably safe for now

So is Twitter going to be dethroned by this up-and-coming platform? Eh. Probably not.

Mastodon.social might offer users a temporary escape, but some of Twitter’s biggest flaws—like the amount of trolls and bullies that run rampant on the platform—are not being actively addressed and prevented by Mastodon.social thus far. For example, there are currently no anti-harassment tools in place, nor a clear plan for monetization (the site is currently being funded via Patreon). There have also already been site overload issues on their server, which caused them to close their main instance—Mastodon.social—from new users, encouraging them to join a different instance instead.

So will Mastodon eventually join the ranks of short lived social media platforms like Peach, Ello, and Diaspora? Only time will tell.

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