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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Alex Hern

Joining the herd: what’s it like moving from Twitter to Mastodon?

A bview of a phone screen in someone's hand with the Mastodon app downloading
Mastodon is not a single site, but a protocol that links independent social networks in its ‘fediverse’. Photograph: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

Mastodon feels like the old internet. “Welcome to Mastodon, where you can boost a toot from hellsite.site to mas.to, but remember to CW politics and boot doxers or your instance might be defederated” is a sentence that will make sense eventually – but is unlikely to mean anything on your first day.

Social media startups are ten a penny, but few are so proudly distinct from the competition as the countercultural network that has gained millions of new users over the past week as Elon Musk triggers an exodus from Twitter.

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