Never heard about Mastodon, it’d have been nice if the article explained what it is. Is this yet another startup promising they won’t become a merciless corporation? Great value prop, lol
“What is Mastodon? My elevator pitch is that it’s a social network for sharing short messages, photos, links, and more that is built by and for people. It’s open source and federated, which means there are no ads, no invasive tracking, no shareholders to demand #maximum #engagement, and no single company or server that can be shut down. It already has over 2 million users, and you can learn more at JoinMastodon.org.”
Mastodon isn't a startup - it's not even a company. It's a framework, like phpBB forums were (are, I guess). Basically, it's a way that anyone with a web server can set up a Twitter-clone site, but - thanks to the ActivityPub protocol - all those twitter-clones can talk to each other, making the whole universe of Mastodon instances functionally one giant social network.
Mastodon:Twitter::IRC:Facebook Messenger
Practical answer:
Mastodon is a Twitter clone that's currently pretty nice and enjoyable by virtue of being small. It's also decentralized, which is a cool buzzword, but also in practice means that it's nicely broken up into a bunch of small specialized communities in each Mastodon instance that can feel pretty cozy and friendly, way less overwhelming than Twitter.
The really unique thing about it is that it's a weirdo open-source-y alternative social network that actually doesn't appear to be dying off like Diaspora or Voat or Steemit or whatever did - it seems to have reached a sort of social critical mass where people are sticking around because they genuinely enjoy the company and interactions with other users, and is growing at a sustainable rate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=IPSbNdBmWKE https://joinmastodon.org/
I felt that the real problem is the same most new networks have: everyone is on other centralized networks
The other problem is discoverability is challenging. My experience trying to find people worth following was kind of meh: it seemed like it was (I’m still not sure if this is accurate) necessary to connect to Multiple different servers, to follow people who had chosen different servers as their main account.
Maybe it would be better with more usability? But fundamentally it has to compete with network effects of other platforms, and most users simply do not care about centralization: it’s not a selling point, it’s just a fact
In reality, Mastodon is just one single network (because who'd want to tweet alone) which is even more tightly moderated than Twitter or Facebook.