Technologies

More Journalists Banned by Twitter: How to Find Them on Mastodon

Reporters locked out of their Twitter accounts have turned to alternative social network Mastodon. Learn how to use it.

For most of the two months that Elon Musk has owned Twitter, the social media site has been embroiled in controversy. Musk laid off thousands of employees, rolled out a botched blue-check verification system and then suspended the jet tracking account he claimed he’d never suspend.

On Dec. 15, Twitter reached a boiling point when the site suspended several journalists who report on or have been critical of Elon Musk. Twitter reinstated some accounts, but other reporters who did not delete certain tweets are still locked out of the site two weeks later, and more have joined them.

Today, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Gil Duran reported that he’s been banned from Twitter for more than 10 days for tweeting a question about the other suspended reporters: «Is tweeting about a banned account now prohibited? How about tweeting about an account that was banned for tweeting about a banned account?»

For several of those journalists formerly on Twitter, you can now only read their full stories on Mastodon.

Learn more about Mastodon and how to find the accounts of the reporters who’ve been locked out of Twitter. You can also find a step-by-step process for creating a Mastodon account and participating on the growing social network. For more about social media, here’s how to delete your Twitter account and how to download your Twitter archive before you do.

Which reporters and accounts were suspended by Twitter?

On Dec. 14, Twitter suspended @elonjet, a bot account that tracked the private flights of Elon Musk. It’s run by University of Central Florida student Jack Sweeney, whose personal account and other bot accounts were also suspended. Musk had criticized Sweeney’s account but also pledged not to ban it in a now infamous tweet from Nov. 6.

To justify its suspension of Sweeney’s accounts, Twitter updated its private information and media policy on Wednesday to prohibit «live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes.»

The following day, the official Twitter account for Mastodon was suspended, apparently for sharing a link to the Elonjet account on mastodon.social.

Later in the day on Dec. 15, around 4:30 p.m. PT, several technology reporters found their Twitter accounts had been suspended. Some, but not all, of the accounts had posted links to the Elonjet account on Mastodon.

In response to news of the suspensions, Musk tweeted, «Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.» Suspensions of other reporters who tweeted about Musk continued through the evening. Musk posted two Twitter polls asking when the journalists should be allowed back on Twitter, and the «Now» response won both polls. Several, but not all, journalists had their Twitter accounts reinstated after deleting certain tweets. Others have refused to delete tweets, and others yet have been suspended for uncertain reasons.

Most of the major Twitter accounts that were suspended on Twitter have created accounts on the decentralized social media network Mastodon, with differing levels of participation. Here are the links to their official accounts on Mastodon:

Other famous Twitter accounts that are now on Mastodon include:

How can I follow someone on Mastodon without joining?

Almost all Mastodon servers allow public posts on the network to be viewed by anyone, regardless of whether you have a Mastodon account. You can simply point your web browser to any user’s profile and scroll through their posts.

If you want a centralized way to track multiple Mastodon users, the easiest way is to join a Mastodon server and follow people as you would on Twitter or any other social network (see more below). However, if you really don’t want to join Mastodon, you can also follow accounts using an RSS reader.

Every account on Mastodon automatically publishes an RSS feed that can be followed, For example, you can see an RSS feed of my original Mastodon posts at mas.to/@peterbutler.rss.

How do I join Mastodon?

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not a single website: It’s a decentralized network made up of thousands of websites talking to each other. To start posting on Mastodon (which until quite recently was called «tooting«) and following other people, you’ll need to create an account on a specific Mastodon server or «instance.»

To start following people and posting messages on the Mastodon social service, you begin by joining one specific instance. Each server (if open for registration) has its own sign-up process, but the majority only require a username, email address and password.

Once you’ve joined a Mastodon instance, however, you’re not limited to just following people and posts on that server. You can follow, favorite, reblog or reply to any Mastodon account that’s connected to the larger Fediverse.

How do I choose a Mastodon server?

The Mastodon organization provides a partial list of servers — about 100 — on its joinmastodon.org site. You can filter the servers by geographic region, language, topic registration process and whether or not they’re hosted by individuals or organizations. All servers on the official Mastodon site have agreed to follow the best practices of the Mastodon Server Covenant.

If you’re just testing Mastodon out, you might consider one of the official server instances run by the Mastodon organization. The first and biggest — mastodon.social — has been inundated with new users and has spawned a second mastodon.online server to pick up the slack.

If you want a bigger list of Mastodon servers to review, your best bet right now is instances.social, which offers a sortable list of more than 17,000 Mastodon servers, as well as a wizard-style app that helps you choose a server that fits your requirements.

The site provides useful data about each Mastodon instance, including number of users, number of «statuses» (posts), server uptime percentage and which versions of the Mastodon software it is running. It also lets you filter servers by language; minimum/maximum number of users; and prohibited/allowed content such as nudity, pornography, advertisements or entertainment spoilers. You can also click any instance name — fosstodon.org, for example, a server devoted to open-source software — to read a brief description of the community.

Once you’re actually on a Mastodon site, you can learn about the instance from its «about» page, browse community users on its «explore» page or view recent posts on its «public» page.

You should read the server rules for each Mastodon instance to make sure it’s a good fit, but don’t worry too much about which server you join. You can follow users on other servers and join and leave as many Mastodon servers as you’d like. If you do move around, Mastodon allows you to migrate all of your followers and lists with you.

How do I join a Mastodon server?

Each Mastodon instance will have its own sign-up process, but the vast majority are the same. You provide a username, email address and password, check the box agreeing to the terms of service and server rules, and click «Sign Up.»

You’ll then see a notification asking you to check your email for a verification message. Click the «Verify email address» in that email message, and you’re done. You can now start posting on your Mastodon server and follow anyone in the Fediverse.

Because of the increased traffic to Mastodon servers since Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, some of those registration emails are taking a long time to show up or never arriving at all.

When I registered for the mas.to server, I got a confirmation email in about 15 minutes. Be patient, and try a new server if you can’t complete the registration for another.

After you verify your email address, your Mastodon account should be up and running. You can start posting or following people, though it will take a while to build up your feed. Web tools like Debirdify and FediFinder can jump-start the process by helping you find your Twitter contacts on Mastodon.

While most Mastodon servers offer the quick registration process described above, other, more private instances will ask that you apply for an invitation to the instance, which requires a manual review and longer registration time.

If you do decide to register on a Mastodon server and make it through the process, come visit me @peterbutler@mas.to to say hi.

For more, learn how social media could be hurting your mental health.

Technologies

The Final Supermoon of 2025 Is December’s Cold Moon

It’ll be earning its name as temperatures across the US are expected to be lower than average.

Your last chance to see a supermoon in 2025 is approaching quickly. December’s full moon is scheduled to appear on Dec. 4, exactly one week after Thanksgiving. Even if you don’t make plans to see it, you’ll probably see it anyway, as it’ll be the brightest thing in the night sky.

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December’s Cold Moon is the third of four consecutive supermoons and the last one of 2025. Supermoons tend to come in packs of four thanks to how the moon orbits the Earth. The orbit is elliptical, meaning the moon is closer during some months and farther away in others. When it’s close to Earth, it’s referred to as perigee, and full moons during perigee are considered supermoons.

Since it is closer, the moon will be slightly bigger and brighter in the night sky. According to NASA, a supermoon is 14% larger and 33% brighter than a micro moon, which occurs during full moons when the moon is at its farthest point from Earth, a phenomenon known as apogee. Thus, it is the best time to view a full moon outside of special events like blood moons or lunar eclipses.

When is December’s full moon?

The Farmer’s Almanac reports that December’s full moon will take place on the evening of Dec. 4. It’ll reach peak illumination at 6:14 p.m. ET. Thanks to the recent daylight saving time change, it should be dark enough to see for most of the US, but if it isn’t, it’ll remain full all night. Those who can’t see it due to the weather can see a moon that is more than 90% full from Dec. 2-6.

You won’t need any special equipment to see the moon, as it’ll be the brightest thing in the night sky by a wide margin. Those who want to see more detail can certainly use a telescope or binoculars if they choose, which will make the moon’s various craters and textures easier to see.

December’s full moon is often referred to as the Cold Moon, as it typically occurs when the weather starts to become quite chilly. The moon is earning its name this time around, as a polar vortex is scheduled to hit the US during Thanksgiving and will stick around for a while afterward. The polar vortex will drive down temperatures in much of the US during the week of Dec. 1, so if you do go outside, make sure to bundle up.

Technologies

Anthropic’s New Claude Opus 4.5 AI Model Is Designed for Coding and Office Work

The new reasoning model can also power the Claude for Chrome AI browser extension.

Anthropic’s newest version of its most powerful generative AI model could upend how you manage your spreadsheets. The company said Claude Opus 4.5, announced Monday, is aimed at things you do on the job, like coding and office work.

Google unveiled its powerful new Gemini 3 model last week, and OpenAI released GPT-5.1 the week before. Now it’s Anthropic’s turn. The company, which is popular with businesses and software workers, said Opus 4.5 is focused on getting work done, not generating content.

Claude Opus 4.5 will be available everywhere and will be a default model for Pro (starting at $17/month), Max (starting at $100/month) and Enterprise users.

Opus 4.5 is built to produce documents, spreadsheets and presentations and can automate menial office tasks by using your computer and browser. That includes its deployment in Claude for Chrome, a browser extension that lets Claude do internet tasks for Max users.

This release puts all three Claude models in the 4.5 generation. Anthropic released Sonnet 4.5, its midlevel model, in September and Haiku 4.5, its smallest model, in October.

Advanced reasoning models like Opus are designed to handle complex, demanding tasks. While a smaller, cheaper large language model will provide an answer based on the probabilities in its training data, a reasoning model will rerun and refine its operations to get a better or more complete answer. This takes longer, but it means the AI can handle more difficult operations.

Reasoning models are particularly useful for complicated programming projects or intensive research. The downside is they are slower and more expensive to run, which is why companies often restrict them to paid plans or have strict limits on usage.

Technologies

New Spotify Feature Pulls Playlists Straight From Other Music Services

Moving to Spotify used to mean manually recreating your playlists or relying on third-party tools. Now, it’s seamless.

I use Spotify for hours every single day: on commutes, while cooking, during workouts, when walking my dog. Essentially, whenever life grants me a spare minute, I’m streaming Spotify. But even with all that listening, I’ve always wished the app had an easy way to scoop up the playlists I’d built on other music services. I’d call myself a Spotify loyalist, but there are some songs, such as covers or live versions, that are only available on other platforms.

Spotify finally delivered by recently rolling out a built-in feature that lets you import playlists from rival platforms directly into your library.

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Spotify’s new playlist transfer feature

Spotify announced late last week that it’s launching a new «Import your music» option in its mobile app. This feature, powered by TuneMyMusic, enables listeners to seamlessly import entire playlists from competing services directly into their Spotify library.

At launch, Spotify supports transfers from major platforms including Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, SoundCloud and more.

The original playlists remain intact. Spotify doesn’t delete or alter them from the source app when it makes a copy in your Spotify account.

Why this matters for Spotify users

No more rebuilding your playlists from scratch: Previously, moving to Spotify meant manually recreating your playlists or relying on third-party tools. With this integration, Spotify handles the heavy lifting.
Unlimited transfers: Unlike some free third-party services that limit the number of songs or playlists you can transfer, Spotify’s in-app solution supports unlimited transfers.
Better personalization: Once your playlists are in Spotify, they feed directly into Spotify’s recommendation algorithms. That means personalized features like Daylist and Release Radar start getting smarter right away.
More to do with your music: After importing, you can remix your playlists by inviting friends to collaborate, designing custom cover art or adding transitions between songs if you’re a Premium user.

How to transfer your playlists to Spotify

Here’s a quick how-to so you can bring your favorite playlists over:

Open the Spotify mobile app on your phone.
Go to Your Library.
Scroll to the bottom. You should see a new option title, «Import your music». Tap that.
Follow the prompts to connect to TuneMyMusic. You’ll need to authenticate your account for the service you’re importing from.
Choose the platform you’re moving from (Apple Music, YouTube Music, SoundCloud, etc.).
Select the playlists you want to import.
From there, Spotify will copy them into your library. Once complete, you’ll find them in your Spotify «Playlists» list.