For context, Mastodon is an open-source social network. Its completely free and can be self-hosted. The Mastodon project began as an offshoot of the GNU Social project in March 2016. Mastodon aims to provide users with the ability to join an online community without handing over their private data to advertisers and other parties.
After Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter, many users moved to Mastodon, and more continue to do so today. The people who are leaving Twitter because of Elon Musk are claiming that it is because he is "bad for free speech", "is doing so to promote his own companies", "is greedy", and "doesn't want to get bullied anymore". None of these things are true. Elon Musk acquired Twitter because he saw that it did not truly value free speech. He made it clear in a tweet that he would never censor even his worst critics, because that's what free speech is all about.
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
There seems to be a common misconception that Mastodon.social, the Mastodon instance that lots of Twitter users are moving to, is decentralized. It's not. Neither Twitter nor Mastodon.social is decentralized. The difference is, Twitter is owned by someone who wants the best for humanity, and Mastodon.social is seemingly owned by somebody who isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Mastodon.social also does not have the necessary infrastructure to compete with Twitter. Because many people are signing up for an account on Mastodon.social, their website/server has slowed down significantly (the website now takes over 10 seconds to load). Additionally, by moving to Mastodon, you are not switching to a censorship-free platform, because, censorship is still possible on Mastodon instances, and it happens all the time. If the owner of a Mastodon instance doesn't like what you're saying, they can remove your account and ban you from the platform. Nothing stops them from doing so, in fact, the owner of Mastodon.social doesn't seem to be a big fan of free speech.
Mastodon just really just isn't ideal for a proper social media platform. It can be relatively difficult to use, it isn't censorship free, it doesn't feel too nice when using it, it's not one central platform where everybody is (leading to a smaller userbase per Mastodon instance), and it, usually, is very susceptible to DDoS attacks. You can use Mastodon if you want, but we think Twitter, in most ways, is a better solution.
