Physically shorter than today's elephants but weighing up to 14 tons, mastodons had reddish-brown and very thick fur to survive in cold climates. Their tusks were positioned lower than those of modern elephants, yet they were stronger and larger. Mastodons are estimated to have lived between 25 million and 11,000 years ago.
These are the characteristics of the mastodon, an ancient elephant that inspired the name of a social media platform on the Fediverse.
Psst... If you haven't read about the Fediverse yet, Ladies, you can check out this article first.
Migration from X
The number of Mastodon users surged in November 2022. Why? Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter—later rebranded as “X”—and his immediate implementation of controversial policies: removing all content restrictions to create "pure" free speech.
Musk stated that pure free speech could only be achieved if restrictions on content deemed racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., were removed. This means everyone could express any opinion freely without any limitations.
This policy alarmed many individuals and groups, including academics. They argued that it would exacerbate the spread of hoaxes and misinformation uncontrollably.
Despite the criticism and protests, Musk stood firm. Frustrated and disappointed, some people chose to migrate from X to other platforms that function and look very similar to X.
Yes! What else but Mastodon?
The Doppelganger Story
Mastodon was founded by a young German, Eugen Rochko. Rochko was actually an admirer of X for its effective microblogging capabilities.
However, he felt that X needed to be transformed into a platform not controlled by one person or company, but by its users.
“Over time, people started to become disillusioned with X because of the top-down policies implemented by its owner,” Rochko said in an interview.
Rochko knew some might find his idea strange, as it’s hard to imagine investors being interested in such a business model.
However, Rochko had his reasons. He believed that without being driven by profit motives, the negative aspects of a platform would disappear on their own. With this principle, Rochko founded Mastodon, a platform with an interface and functionality similar to X, in 2016.
Mastodon gradually began to gain popularity, peaking in 2022 when Musk took over X. To date, Mastodon has more than 10 million users.
So, what are Mastodon’s advantages?
3 Advantages of Mastodon
1. Better Content Moderation
Some people believe that the spread of hoaxes and misinformation on Mastodon could be worse because its content moderation is not as stringent as X's.
However, Rochko argues that Mastodon actually implements stricter and better moderation because it does not have a single centralized moderation system.
Each instance has its own moderation rules determined by its admin. In one server, for example, a statement might be considered racist, but not necessarily in another server.
In this way, Rochko continues, moderation becomes a more democratic process.
2. Tighter Security
Unlike X, which has centralized servers to store all user data, each instance on Mastodon has its own server that can be run on a local hard drive or cloud storage.
Through such decentralized servers, massive data breaches like those experienced by X, Facebook, or other platforms can be minimized.
3. Easier Verification
After Musk acquired X, user verification became more difficult than before. Although many users criticized this, Musk did not change the rule, arguing that stricter verification was necessary to reduce the number of bots on X.
Conversely, Mastodon does not require such stringent verification. Mastodon users only need to add a link to their personal website or blog in their profile. So easy, right?
Starting from a dream to create an inclusive and democratic platform, Rochko wants to show that nothing is impossible in this world, including "reviving" something extinct to serve as an inspiration for the future.
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