Eugen Rochko is the CEO of Mastodon — the open-source decentralized competitor to Twitter. It’s where a lot of Twitter users have gone in our post-Elon Musk era.
The idea of Mastodon is that you don’t join a single platform that one company controls. You join a server, and that server can show you content from users across the entire network. If you decide you don’t like the people who run your server or you think they’re moderating content too strictly, you can leave and take your followers and social graph with you. Think about it like email, and you’ll get it. If you don’t like Gmail, you can switch to something else, but you don’t have to quit email entirely as a concept.
It’s not Twitter that Mastodon has to seize the moment from. It’s all the other commercial offerings that will inevitably pop up in its place as Twitter crashes and burns.
Agreed. I think the headline was more to catch the attention of your average social media user but Eugen does mention the way those services tend to fade away so hopefully it’s just a matter of time before more people make the leap.
I think he’s a bit over-hopeful at the fediverse’s prospects, sadly. People will give up so much (like all of their privacy!) for a small amount of convenience.