People are flocking to this Twitter alternative following the Elon Musk drama

Just after telling you guys about how you can deactivate your Twitter account or give yourselves a 29-day break from it (if you cross 30 days your account permanently gets deactivated) - here’s something interesting. There is a Twitter alternative, that too a decentralised one, that you can try out instead.

Mastodon, an open-source alternative to Twitter, was launched back in 2016 and has been growing in popularity ever since. It was first made available on the iOS App Store,and now has finally made its way to the Google Play Store. It has a significantly smaller user base, only 4.4 million users, as compared to Twitter, but its decentralised nature is one of the main reason as to why Mastodon works, albeit for a smaller audience, and also because it “relies heavily upon mini-communities and interest groups that are hosted within unique servers”.

So how does Mastodon actually work? For starters, there is no main timeline or database, there are also no ads, and a 500 character limit for posts, and it is entirely “community-driven”. The last of a main timeline and database means that Mastodon does lack some functions and features that other social media sites have.

The official version for Android that just rolled out reportedly “includes all of the core or essential features you would expect from a social network including notifications, search, and community browsing”. However, this official Play Store version lacks the ability to view local or federated timelines, unlike what’s possible on some other third-party platforms.

Since Mastodon is an open-source project, it has a number of third-party clients, and this is the first official Mastodon app that has been made available on the Google Play Store.

Of course, it is free to download and use and according to reports, after Elon Musk bought almost 10 per cent of Twitter, Mastodon has seen a huge spike in sign-ups. So you know where the world is headed?

Also Read: Had enough of Twitter, Elon Musk, and all that chatter? Here's how to drop off

Also Read: Elon Musk to invest up to $15 billion of own money to buy Twitter: Report