Meet the German maverick taking on Elon Musk with ‘Twitter killer’ Mastodon
Many are ditching the blue bird for an alternative – but will it be a white elephant? Gareth Corfield reports
Eugen Rochko was, by his own admission, a heavy user of Twitter. But something didn’t sit right with him. The 29-year-old from Thuringia didn’t like the idea that one person, or company, could own and control what he viewed as a public utility.
In 2016, when rumours were spreading that Paypal founder Peter Thiel wanted to buy Twitter, Rochko set about creating his own decentralised social network.
What emerged was Mastodon, a so-called “Twitter killer”. Six years since its launch, the network has made Rochko an unlikely hero for thousands of Twitter defectors. Many are unhappy with Elon Musk’s $44bn (£38.4bn) purchase of Twitter, with concerns ranging from the billionaire’s stance on free speech to his plan to let people pay for verification check marks.
Mastodon’s main functions are similar to Twitter. Instead of posting tweets, users write 500-character “toots”. They don’t share others’ messages by re-tweeting them, they “boost” them. Buttons and icons are in similar places.
But unlike Twitter, users register their accounts on different servers, each of which are run independently with their own content rules. The servers are themed by interests, such as hobbies or countries and users are still allowed to follow users on other servers.
Rochko, who moved to Germany from Russia when he was 11, has been outspoken in his criticism of Musk. “The man is not entirely comprehensible,” he told Time magazine. “I don’t agree with a lot of his behaviours and his decision-making.
“I think that buying Twitter was an impulse decision that he soon regretted. And that he basically got himself into a situation that kind of forced him to commit to the deal. And now he’s in it, and he has to deal with the fallout.”
Musk and Rochko make an unusual pair to be at loggerheads in the hyper-competitive world of social media. A hardworking and publicityshy character – most of Rochko’s interviews to date focus on the deep technical detail necessary to create and run a social media service with around 4.5m users – Rochko’s modest public profile stands in sharp contrast to the brash braggadocio of Musk.
Mastodon now has more than a million active monthly users. About 489,000 people have signed up since Musk took over Twitter in late October. All of the new interest has caused strain on the platform. “While it’s nice to see your work finally taken seriously in the mainstream, the 12 to 14 hour workdays I’ve had to pull to handle everything is anything but,” Rochko posted.
Cracks are starting to show. Some users have complained about not receiving confirmation emails upon registering. Rochko said he was running into a daily email-sending limit with the company’s provider. Musk himself is keeping an eye on the site and chimed in with a sarcastic plug for Mastodon.
“Would you believe me if I told you I was extremely tired?” he posted on Sunday. “But the release candidate for Mastodon 4.0 is finally out of the way, and I think it’s neat.”
It remains to be seen whether Mastodon can become a serious challenger to Twitter, which boasts more than 200m users a day. If Stephen Fry’s experience of the social network is anything to go by, however, it may be a long time before Musk is seriously troubled by it.
Fry, the former QI host, had a following of 12.5m people on Twitter until he turned his back on the network this week. His move to the “fediverse”, however, appears to have left the 65-year-old baffled.
“Is there a simple video or document that could explain to an idiot how this service works?” he posted on Monday, reaching his 28,000 followers.
Jamie Mcewan, a senior analyst at media consultancy Enders Analysis, says the site has a long way to go before corporate users will look twice at it.
“Mastodon has all the disadvantages of decentralisation. It’s unintuitive, it’s got patchy moderation to put it kindly, and your home server could be switched off at any point,” he says. “It’s a nightmare for the average user.”
Paolo Pescatore, a media analyst with PP Insight, claims the network is “clunky” and needs a “fundamental change in ethos and approach”.
“Not everyone is going to jump ship, which causes a real headache for companies, brands and advertisers,” he says. “They want eyeballs. It will take a long time to replicate the same user base and following.”
Mastodon could ultimately suffer the same fate as Signal. The messaging app almost doubled its number of users last year after Whatsapp issued an update to its privacy policy on how data is shared with Facebook. Nine months later, the world still largely uses Whatsapp while Signal remains a niche app. It’s a cycle that Mastodon seems bound to repeat.
“So long as Twitter is functioning, Mastodon will be there as a niche fallback option,” says Mcewan. “Twitter would have to implode for that to change.”