What is Mastodon, and what are its features that Twitter lacks

Now that the self-declared free-speech absolutist, Elon Musk, is in charge of Twitter, many users, sceptical about the platform's leadership and future, are searching for alternatives to the microblogging platform. While Indian Twitter users can look towards Koo, global users have options such as Reddit and Tumblr. However, there's a decentralised, open-source platform that is grabbing a lot of headlines these days - Mastodon. But what is Mastodon? Is it an alternative to Twitter, or its something more? Let's find out.

What is Mastodon?

As mentioned earlier, Mastodon is a free, open-source social media platform founded by Eugen Rochko in 2016. However, what makes Mastodon different from other platforms is that it is decentralised. Rather than being controlled by a board of directors or a tech mogul like Twitter, Mastodon allows users to pick servers or communities that host their data and talk about a particular topic. 

A Mastodon server could be about any topic, such as "LBTQ+," "Activism," or others, and is governed by administrators, somewhat like group admins on WhatsApp. While some servers require users to join a waitlist, some are ready to join. What's even more interesting is that any user can request to create a server, called "instances," by submitting a request, giving more control to the users. 

In simple words, Mastodon is like Twitter, where users are in better control

Talking about content, the decentralised platform shows text-based "toots" in chronological order, whereas, on Twitter, the algorithm decides and recommends content to users. The toots can be up to 500 characters long, against 280 characters tweets on Twitter. Like the Musk-led microblogging platform, Mastodon users can create their own handles when they join the platform, share media, re-share toots, bookmark them or mark them as favourite. 

Here are the features that the platform offers

What if I told you that on Mastodon, you can verify yourself, by yourself, for free...  https://t.co/Jk9TrMp4Pp pic.twitter.com/HtK17oX6SZ

— Mastodon (@joinmastodon) November 5, 2022

When users communicate with each other on Mastodon, they can do so in direct, private and public privacy settings. Like other social media platforms, public toots are visible to everyone, whereas private toots are only visible to followers. While this is a basic idea about what Mastodon is, here are the platform's features, and Twitter doesn't. 

1. Edit button - Twitter already has an edit button, but that is only available to the current Blue subscribers.  

2. Server-custom emoticons

3. Auto-delete posts option

4. Extended notification bar

5. 500 character limit

6. Advanced post-filter system

7. Content warnings

Additionally, Mastodon allows users to verify themselves for free without paying a monthly fee, which was the case with the old Twitter. With all the features and its decentralised nature, Mastodon does present itself as a worthy Twitter alternative, but some things might bother users. 

First, Mastodon does not yet have a vast user base, which might affect users' decision to switch to the platform. Secondly, the server-based structure it works on might be too complicated for some users. Nevertheless, the platform tweeted on Thursday that it got over 2,30,000 users recently and has witnessed a 71% increase in monthly active users. 

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