Mastodon, the open-source alternative to Twitter, now has an official Android app

(Image Courtesy: Mastodon)

Mastodon, the semi-popular alternative to microblogging platform Twitter, has now officially released an app for Android. The platform launched on iOS in July last year.

What is Mastodon? 

Mastodon is an open-source platform for running self-hosted social networking services. It is a decentralised service that has no single entity or server overseeing it.

It claims to be community-owned and ad-free. Users set up their private servers and host them based on multiple categories such as gaming, technology and journalism. Each server is called an Instance.

Also Read: Donald Trump's social media platform a Mastodon rip-off ?

How big is Mastodon? 

To put it simply, not as big as Twitter. It had a fairly healthy user base of more than 4.4 million users in 2021 across all instances. By comparison, Twitter had 217 million active monetiseable users by the fourth quarter of 2021.

What are the advantages of Mastodon? 

Mastodon prides itself in being an open-source platform that is supported by a community. It does not run an ad model, so there is no advertising on the platform. This means that your feed remains clean of obtrusive posts. Being open-source also means that anyone with coding knowledge can contribute to active development or even make a customised fork (alternatives derived from original source code) of their own.

The platform's underlying software framework allows developers to build apps that can tap into the social network, which is why there are many third-party apps like Tusky or Yuito that allow you access to the platform.

Each instance is also separate, and has its own set of rules and conditions. The instances themselves may contain tens and thousands of users, or even just one.

Mastodon taps into a vast federated server space that is known as the Fediverse. This allows its instances to seamlessly operate with each other, allowing users from instance to communicate with the other.

While the platform offers some comparable features to Twitter, it simply cannot compete with the number of options Twitter gives you. It's also fairly standard in appearance compared to the larger microblogging platform.

Also Read: Twitter's upcoming 'edit' feature will retain a copy of the original tweet

Mastodon's main goal is not to overtake Twitter, but to give control of data back to the users. Since there is no single entity that is in charge of the platform, you are not at risk of your data being collected and sold to advertisers.