Report: Migration from twitter shows no signs that it is slowing down following Musk’s takeover

• A new reportPublished Friday, it was found that the #TwitterMigration shows little signs of slowing.
• Users are joining other social networks, such as Mastodon, in the midst of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
• According to Dewey Digital, Mastodon has an average of 1.5 million users per month.

A new report shows how Twitter users are experiencing the changes as new and old social media platforms compete for their attention. The movement has been called the #TwitterMigration. This hashtag refers to users moving to other online communities.

Twitter has always been chaotic, but it has become even more chaotic in the wake of Elon Musk’s announcements. turbulent takeover. Musk has closed the $44 billion deal to buy the bird appHe’s shared conspiracy theories, antisemitic rhetoricUsers will soon be required pay for this rapid growth. $8 to be verifiedOn the platform. 

Users are responding to his antics by either keeping their accounts open and creating new profiles elsewhere, or moving to different social networks to share their thoughts. 

According to a report, the movement is not slowing down. reportPublished Friday by Dewey Square Group (a political consulting firm).

“If people are leaving, where will they go?”

Insider spoke with Tim Chambers, a principal at Dewey Digital and project leader, to explain why his team is trying to understand the exodus. 

“When I saw the recent Elon Musk purchase and the chaos that followed on Twitter, it was really important to us to be able see if people have left, where they are going.” Chambers said. 

Chambers’ team used data from Twitter to draw their conclusions. They looked at users who added other social media accounts to Twitter bios, public tweets asking users to follow them on other social media platforms, as well as app downloads during the same time period (October 24 to November 22).

The group found that Mastodon — an app described as “social networking that’s not for sale” by its website — is steadily growing by approximately 1.5 million new users per month. According to Dewey Digital, Mastodon account names were added to the Twitter bios for more than 90,000. Users have also mentioned Mastodon nearly 200,000 times over the past 30 days.

“This is the highest of any emerging social platforms,” the report stated.

Mastodon was createdEugen Rochko is a German software developer. In an interviewThe 29-year old said that he began programming Mastodon in response to Twitter irritations. Rochko said, “I was thinking that being in a position to communicate with my friends online through short messages was very important for me, important also for the world and that maybe it shouldn’t belong in the hands of one corporation.”

The platform is an open source, free social network. decentralizedThis means that there is no one server, company, or person who runs it. Rochko stated that it was often related to a distrust of the Twitter’s top-down control.

On November 6, Rochko tooted — Mastodon’s version of tweeting — that the network had hit 1,028,362 monthly active users. “That’s pretty cool,” said the founder.  Twitter has over 237 million total users.

“It just shows how simple it is for everyone just to migrate to another platform.”

Molly JongFast is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and podcast host. She recently switched to the app in November. Insider asked her how it compares with Twitter. She said it’s not as easy and light, but 44 billion dollars cheaper. 

“It just proves how easy it can be for everyone to just move to another platform. Jong-Fast expressed the belief that this is the lesson from Mastodon.

Jong-Fast boasts one million Twitter followers and stated that she does not plan to leave the app. However, she said she will if Musk continues on the same path. After Musk’s official takeover, Twitter was inundated with online trolls. more than 50,000 tweets containing the “N-word” and other forms of hate speech.

“I would rather not support nefarious causes so as soon as there’s a good alternative, I’ll go there,” Jong-Fast said.

Adam Davidson, a writerAnd journalist, has had Mastodon for four years but began actively using it in the last few weeks. Insider heard from him that Twitter was bringing out the worst of him and that he wanted to explore other social media networks. He stated that Twitter fundamentally monetizes the engagement. “And I feel this.” [Mastodon]”I am really focused on the conversation.”

—Adam Davidson @adamdavidson@journa.host (@adamdavidson) November 7, 2022

Davidson created a Mastodon server for journalists only. Although the server has more than 1,000 users, Davidson has encountered some difficulties. Insider was told by Davidson that 184 trolls joined the server after he created it. They began to spew hateful messages at the group members. He was able to moderate hate speech and block these users from posting as an administrator. 

Another challenge that’s come up is some server admins approaching him with concerns about not wanting reporters to mine the social network for stories or sources — something that frequently happens on Twitter. 

“Mastodon historically was a lot academics, a bunch of activists, but not a lot journalists,” Davidson stated. 

Davidson acknowledged that there were some hiccups but overall Mastodon offers many benefits Twitter doesn’t. For example, Mastodon allows people to have expert conversations without the hostility that has become commonplace on the bird app.

Dewey Digital will soon conduct another report. Insider was told Chambers by Chambers that Twitter executives should monitor the migration trends. 

Chambers stated, “I’m very, very close to Twitter and I imagine that teams are as well.”