Why Mastodon?

There have been many products over the years that attempted to replace Twitter and lure away its users. Mastodon by far has been the most successful in grabbing mainstream attention. Here's a quick rundown of other reasons it's a good choice.

Feature parity and familiar UX

To someone to be open to changing platforms, you need to be able to assure them that they can still do all the stuff they want to do on the new one.

The right to exit

The problem with Twitter now is that we can't leave it. Twitter can do whatever they want to the platform and we have to stay there because that's where our friends are. Like with email, with Mastodon we can change providers with minimal friction and that ensures most providers will act according to their users' interests.

Open source and credibly neutral

A necessity for the right to exit, user controll, trust, and neutrality. If you don't like something with the platform – fork it, change it, and publish it.

Community

The hardest part about building software is getting people to use it. Mastodon has done the hard work of sticking around and gradually growing since 2016. It's a huge moat that will be very difficult for any new Twitter clone or competitor to cross. Even if a new product were able to gain attention quickly, they would not have the Lindy effect that Mastodon has.

And the biggest reason of all:

If we all fracture to different platforms, each one will never give us the network effects we now enjoy on Twitter.

Mastodon can accomodate everyone. Hell, even Trump used it as the software behind Truth Social. Whatever your political leanings or preferences, Mastodon can be your thing.

We're all just agreeing to use email here, we're not saying anything about the content of emails we will write, or what people should write.