Interest in open-source software and decentralization has been on the rise over the past decade with new innovations such as Bitcoin. Through the rise in popularity of Bitcoin came the idea that this blockchain technology could be generalized to create a variety of new, decentralized applications (DApps) that would give internet users alternatives to the centralized, corporate tech giants who run basically everything today. While there has been some increased interest in the use of dapps more recently, many of the most popular options are not directly based on blockchain technology.
Mastodon
Mastodon is mostly an open-source, federated Twitter clone that was released only two years ago; however, the social media platform has already garnered over a million users and plenty of attention in the media.[1][2]
The way the system works is through a series of federated servers that all have their own moderation policies. Users are then able to join the Mastodon server that has the moderation policies that best fit their own views. The ability to communicate between different Mastodon servers, called “instances,” is also available.
One of the key selling points of Mastodon is this contrast with Twitter in terms of moderation. In the view of Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko, smaller, close-knit communities will be able to moderate themselves much better than Twitter can moderate the entire world.[3]
Prominent members of a variety of niche online communities, such as the Bitcoin community, have joined Mastodon over the past year or two, but many of those who create accounts tend to not stick around for too long (or at least that’s been my experience on the platform). For now, it appears Mastodon is mostly useful as a backup option in case Twitter becomes much worse in the near future.
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