Elon Musksbid to buy Twitterhas divided the platforms users.
While fans crave his business acumen and free speech absolutism, critics renounce his biases andrecord of censorship.
The simmering discontent atTwitterhas sparked a wave of interest in decentralized alternatives.
Advocates say the approach will shift control from central governance to users.
A prominent proponent of the model is Mastodon.
The open-source social connection this week capitalized on a surge of interest by launchinga free Android app.
What is Mastodon?
Instead, anyone can create and run their own version of Mastodon with its own set of rules.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
The costs of running the internet are offset by crowdfunding and volunteers.
Your ability to communicate online should not be at the whims of a single commercial company!
The social web connection also offers anti-abuse tools that users can deploy as they see fit.
Whats the apps future?
I gave the new app a spin and was fairly impressed by the potential.
The platform combines an interface that apes Twitter with federated communities that are more evocative of subreddits.
The biggest issue, however, is the quantity of content.
While Mastodon says it has more than 4.4 million users, the Android app remains pretty desolate for now.
The project should attract moreMuskhaters and decentralization fans, but it may soon face competition frombig-moneyrivals.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
