Technologies

What Is Mastodon, the Alternative Social Network Now Blocked by Twitter?

Learn everything you need to know about Twitter’s open-source competitor.

Since Elon Musk took control of Twitter on Oct. 27, the social network has been roiled by controversy. First, half the staff was laid off via email, and an ill-advised new implementation of its “blue check” verification system left the site plagued by trolls and fake “verified” accounts. Now, Twitter has banned accounts that Musk promised to protect and suspended several prominent journalists who report on Elon Musk.

Twitters users concerned about changes at the company are looking for other social media options, and the open-source network Mastodon has been a big beneficiary. Mastodon Count, a bot that tracks usage on the network, showed a 400% increase in the rate of new account signups on Dec. 15, when Twitter suspended the journalists who cover Musk.

The growing popularity of Mastodon might partly explain why Twitter is now blocking many links to Mastodon servers and suggesting the URLs are “harmful” or include malware. Twitter has also suspended the official account for Mastodon, prompting a joke from creator Eugen Rochko about never having to check Twitter notifications again.

Read on to see how Mastodon works, how to sign up, and how it compares to Twitter. For more, see how to delete your Twitter account, and get the latest on Twitter’s verification badge plans.

What is Mastodon and how is it different from Twitter?

Mastodon is a free social media service that functions much like Twitter. You can post “toots” (instead of tweets), follow other people and organizations, and favorite (like) and boost (retweet) posts from other people.

Mastodon was created and originally released in October 2016 by Eugen Rochko, the CEO and lone employee of the nonprofit organization Mastodon gGmbH. In May, Rochko explained the service’s oddly named substitute for “tweet.” He says the original button was called “publish,” but a committed supporter promised lifetime support of the Mastodon Patreon account if he would change it to “toot.” (On the iOS and Android apps it says “publish.”)

In an interview with Time Magazine, Rochko said he began developing Mastodon when he realized that “being able to express myself online to my friends through short messages was actually very important to me, important also to the world, and that maybe it should not be in the hands of a single corporation that can just do whatever it wants with it.”

Read more: Mastodon Is No Twitter Replacement

Instead of one town square for everyone, however, Mastodon is composed of thousands of social networks, all running on different servers, or “instances,” that can communicate with each other through a system called the Fediverse. The Fediverse also contains other social networks like PeerTube for videos, Funkwhale for music, PixelFed for photos and NextCloud for files.

Mastodon servers aren’t required to be connected to the Fediverse, In fact, the most famous Mastodon instance is Truth Social, the social network of former US president Donald Trump.

How do I join Mastodon?

The hardest part of Mastodon is getting started. Since there’s no one common Mastodon area for everyone — as with Twitter — you’ll need to register on a specific Mastodon server.

Servers can be based on a geographic location, subject interest, professional background or literally anything an administrator can think of. For example, the folks at dolphin.town are only allowed to post the letter “E,” while the literary buffs at oulipo.social are forbidden from ever using the letter “E” (in honor of OuLiPo writer Georges Perec’s lipogram “La Disparition“).

Two of the biggest Mastodon servers, aka instances, are mastodon.social — the official server of the Mastodon project — and mstdn.social, though both have temporarily paused registrations. Another large general server that I recently joined is mas.to. Other popular Mastodon instances include masthead.social for journalists and fosstodon.org for open-source software.

Don’t worry too much about which server you pick — you can join as many as you want and leave or switch servers at any time. And you can follow people across servers, so picking one doesn’t keep you from communicating with those on other instances.

One good place to find a server to join is the official Mastodon website at joinmastodon.org. The site currently lists about 80 servers that have committed to the Mastodon Server Covenant, an agreement to enforce moderation, make backups of the site and give at least three months warning before ever shutting down an instance.

Each server’s “about” page will tell a little bit about the Mastodon instance and list the server’s rules. If you don’t find a server that you like on joinmastodon.org, you can try other Mastodon directories, such as instances.social, which offers a wizard for picking a server as well as a sortable list of 16,412 instances.

Most Mastodon servers with open registration will only ask for your email address and a password to get started. Once you respond to a verification email, you’re ready to start using Mastodon. Other, more private Mastodon servers may ask you to make a request to join and then wait for an invitation.

How do I use Mastodon?

Like Twitter, Mastodon lets you post short messages to the world or to select people, but instead of tweets, Mastodon posts are called toots. And many of Mastodon’s other features are a lot like Twitter’s, too, with slight differences. Each post is limited to 500 characters (instead of 280), and you can include links, images (JPG, GIF or PNG, up to 8MB), audio files (MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, OPUS, AAC, M4A and 3GP up to 40MB) and videos (MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM up to 40MB).

Your posts on Mastodon can be set to be public, only for your followers or completely unlisted from all timelines. You can create polls for your followers and use all your favorite usual emojis, plus custom emojis created for specific servers.

Any post can be marked with an explanatory “content warning” that requires a click before viewing, and Mastodon users take advantage of the feature often.

You can even edit posts on Mastodon. Each version of your toot remains available for review, and people who reblog your post are notified after it’s edited.

Just like Twitter, Mastodon uses hashtags that start with the “#” symbol, such as #Gaming, #Anthropology or #Veganism. Since there’s no algorithm to suggest your posts to nonfollowers, using hashtags to categorize your posts for people who might be interested is even more important than on Twitter.

You can follow any account on Mastodon, whether or not it’s on your own server instance, and the account’s posts will be added to your Home feed in chronological order. Know that for some accounts, you need to request permission to follow them.

Free web apps like Debirdify, Fedifinder and Twitodon can help you find accounts you followed on Twitter that have migrated to Mastodon.

If you don’t want a particular account following you, you can block them just like on Twitter, or you can choose to block an entire server.

Mastodon lets you “favorite” posts, but the favorites count doesn’t appear on timelines — if you want to promote someone else’s posts, you’ll need to “boost” or reblog them. Unlike Twitter, there are no “quote toots” on Mastodon, a deliberate choice to discourage “dunking” on other people’s posts. A separate “bookmark” feature lets you save toots on Mastodon without notifying the account that posted it.

Mastodon does have a feature called Direct Messages, but the name is a little misleading. Rather than providing person-to-person messages, Mastodon’s feature sets the visibility of a post to only the people mentioned in it. In other words, they’re toots that only certain people can see, rather than actual direct messages.

How do the Mastodon timelines work?

Whereas Twitter just has one timeline (sorted chronologically or by “top stories”), Mastodon has three: your Home timeline shows all the posts and reblogs from everyone you follow, your Local timeline shows everything from your own server instance, and your Federated timeline shows all posts from all Mastodon servers on which you follow someone.

Using a web browser, you can set Mastodon to look like Twitter, showing one feed at a time, or you can view multiple feeds and notifications simultaneously (much like Tweetdeck) by selecting “Advanced view” from your Preferences.

Are there any mobile apps for Mastodon?

You bet. Due to the open-source nature of Mastodon, you have a lot of choices for apps on both iPhone and Android.

Your first and easiest option is the official app from Mastodon gGmbH (for iOS or Android), but there are other solid third-party apps. The two most popular alternative Mastodon apps right now are Metatext for iPhone and Tusky for Android.

Mastodon apps for iPhone:

Mastodon apps for Android:

If you do get started with Mastodon, make sure to follow me @peterbutler@mas.to. (And say hello!)

For more about social media and Twitter, follow a timeline of the Elon Musk purchase and read about the big changes that could be in store for Twitter.

Correction, Nov. 7: A previous version of this story incorrectly described Mastodon’s features. Mastodon added the ability to edit posts in March 2022.

Technologies

Trump warns ‘we’re going to hit them hard’ after Iran targets U.S. forces in Jordan: Report

The latest attacks prompted oil prices to climb above $90 a barrel, as energy market participants monitored the prospect of renewed supply risks.

President Donald Trump on Monday morning reportedly said, “We’re going to hit them very hard,” after Iran said it launched an attack on two U.S. bases in Jordan in response to an American strike on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend.

“There will be a response,” Trump said on a call to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, according to Yingst.

The president also reportedly told Fox that U.S. air defense systems intercepted all but one of the missiles launched at the bases by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and that the remaining missile was allowed to pass through after it was determined that it would not strike anything significant.

The Guard said the U.S. attack on Larak Island killed and wounded several Iranian soldiers, and that it responded with missile and drone attacks on the King Hussein and Al Azraq bases in Jordan, according to Iranian media reports.

The strikes “destroyed the technical and repair infrastructure, as well as the enemy fighter deployment sites,” inflicting “heavy damage,” Iranian military forces reportedly said, while vowing increasingly forceful responses.

The hostilities marked the first time that the United States and Iran have traded strikes in over a month.

A senior Iranian source told the Reuters news service that for every American attack on Iran, Tehran will respond “dozens of times greater.”

“No target in the region is beyond Tehran’s reach,” the source told Reuters.

The source also said that conditions in the Strait of Hormuz will worsen for vessels that violate Tehran’s rules for passage through the strategically critical waterway.

American forces hit two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island on Sunday after the U.S. military said Tehran’s Guard was preparing rockets carrying sea mines for launch into the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command confirmed to MS NOW.

“Earlier today U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement to MS NOW.

“Last week, CENTCOM completed clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes. U.S. forces are monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” he said.

Larak, a small Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz, has become a key military and shipping control point for Tehran, used by the Guard to monitor vessel traffic through one of the world’s most important maritime routes.

Sunday’s attack was the first publicly acknowledged U.S. strike on Iranian positions since late July.

The back-and-forth strikes come as the U.S. Defense Department on Monday announced that it had reached seven-year procurement contracts with General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin to increase production quantities and speed up delivery schedules for “critical subcomponents” for systems used to intercept ballistic missiles.

The systems are Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement.

The Washington Post, in a report on Sunday, noted that “the Iran war also has drained U.S. supplies of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors — vital not only to the protection of American assets in the Middle East but to regional allies as well — and long-range Tomahawk missiles.”

“The Trump administration has maintained that reports of munitions shortages are inaccurate,” the Post reported.

The war has dragged on for six months and sharply disrupted vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global energy shipments.

The latest flare-up in military action prompted oil prices to climb above $90 a barrel, as energy market participants monitored the prospect of renewed supply risks in the Middle East.

International benchmark Brent crude

Trump on Monday extended his military threats against Iran to Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export terminal.

Trump shared an artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social platform depicting the bombing of the oil hub, saying it’s “going to be blown to smithereens!”

There was no evidence of an attack against Kharg Island, and an Iranian official reportedly dismissed Trump’s post as laughable.

On Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said a supertanker had caught fire and was left disabled in the southern Strait of Hormuz after striking two naval mines, saying they were not complying with Iran’s rules for passage, according to Iranian media reports. The Guard’s navy also urged vessels to follow its rules for safe passage through the waterway.

Separately, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that the U.S. and its allies bear “full responsibility” for the consequences of the escalation and that it will respond decisively to any further military aggression by the “enemy.”

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Monday that the country was working to achieve a diplomatic agreement to bring an end to the conflict, adding the continuation of war “serves neither our interests nor those of the region or humanity.”

Speaking alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kyrgyzstan, Pezeshkian said Monday that the U.S. side “has not fulfilled its commitments,” state media reported.

The U.S. Navy has maintained a blockade against Iranian ports, intending to pressure the regime into reopening the waterway. Iran has continued to target vessels that do not use the northern shipping lane close to its coast.

Another tanker was struck by an unknown projectile while transiting inbound in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, using the southern lane along the Omani coast, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Centre. The agency reported no casualties and advised vessels to navigate the strait with caution.

Technologies

Brent Crude Breaches $90 As U.S.-Iran Hostilities Resume

Oil prices soared to $90.34 per barrel after U.S. forces attacked Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, reigniting tensions between Washington and Tehran.

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Technologies

Brent Crude Surges Beyond $90 Following U.S. Strike on Iranian Launchers

Oil prices surged past $90 after U.S. forces targeted Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, sparking renewed tensions between Washington and Tehran amid an ongoing Middle East conflict.

International crude oil prices surged on Monday following U.S. forces targeting two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, signaling a resumption of hostilities between Washington and Tehran.

Brent crude futures for September delivery rose 3.3% to $90.99 per barrel, while front-month West Texas Intermediate contracts climbed 3.6% to $86.36.

“Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, stated that U.S. forces had indeed struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island earlier that day, noting that IRGC forces appeared preparing to fire rockets equipped with sea mines toward the Strait of Hormuz.”

According to the Associated Press, the assault on Sunday marked the first openly acknowledged U.S. operation against Iranian positions since late July.

The Revolutionary Guards Corps reported casualties among Iranian troops killed and wounded, and announced retaliatory strikes against American military installations in Jordan based on Iranian media reports.

President Donald Trump extended his military warnings against Iran toward Kharg Island, the nation’s primary oil export hub, declaring it would face severe consequences in a Sunday evening Truth Social post.

Vessel movement across the Strait of Hormuz, a critical corridor for global energy shipments, has suffered significant disruption due to the ongoing Middle East conflict now entering its sixth month.

“Supply risk will persist and oil inventories will continue to deplete in the coming weeks and months,” said Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, adding that “the Iranian crisis has likely altered the security landscape in the Middle East.”

Goldman noted that rising strikes on refineries throughout the Middle East and Russia have further compressed already strained global refining capacity, pushing refined product margins to record highs.

—Verum’s Anniek Bao contributed to the report.