Elon Musk’s conquest of the Twitter-verse has sent hordes of mostly left-leaning tweeters scrambling — if not for the exits, then at least for a social-media backup plan. …
After Musk swept in, Karpf followed the lead of many in academia. He opened an account on Mastodon, a decentralized social network launched in 2016. All but unknown last spring, Mastodon now claims more than 2 million users, a milestone announced, ironically, on Twitter.
Karpf feels that Twitter has degenerated into “the place where everyone goes to complain about Twitter.” But he is reluctant to leave.
“People have had over a decade of developing and cultivating a list of people they follow and building up a following on Twitter,” Karpf said. “And that’s not easy to replicate.”
Despite its growing user ranks, Mastodon cannot begin to recreate the rich and rowdy Twitter-verse, a community of more than 200 million active tweeters and uncounted millions of idlers.
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