Lots of people are looking for a Twitter alternative after Elon Musk bought the social media site last month, changed the site’s rules on impersonation, fired half of the site’s staff, and announced plans to sell “blue check” verification badges for $8 per month.
One of the fastest growing alternatives is Mastodon, which looks and feels a lot like Twitter.
But Mastodon isn’t a Twitter clone. It’s a free open-source platform, originally launched in 2016 by developer Eugen Rochko, and it’s made up of many different instances, or servers, instead of being managed by one company on one domain name.
This makes signing up and getting finding your friends a little bit harder.
There are also strange little quirks as well. Tweets are called “toots.” Retweets are called “boosts.” Because it’s an open-source project, it doesn’t have the same level of polish as social media sites like Twitter that are owned and operated by professionals.
Emails and loading can be slow. It’s a little bit like using Linux versus Windows or MacOS.
Mastodon has been growing fast. In the 12 days after Musk bought Twitter, Mastodon app downloads on Apple App Store and Google Play for Android surged more than 100 times previous rates to 322,000 installs during the period, according to analysis by Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.
On Nov. 7, Mastodon founder Rochko tooted that there were over 1 million monthly active users of the service. That’s still a lot lower than the over 245 million daily active users of Twitter that CEO Elon Musk tweeted about this week.
Here’s what you need to know about Mastodon:
First, you need to pick a server, or instance
Because anyone can set up their own Mastodon server, there’s no central place to sign up like twitter.com. You have to find a server to sign up for. They’re known as “instances,” and you can think of them like e-mail providers.
A user on one instance can interact with users on other instances, including following, replying, and boosting. All instances taken together are called “the fediverse.” (The term comes from “federated,” which refers to the loosely connected way the servers work together — again, similar to email.)
Each instance has its own URL, which comes after your username, sort of like an email domain. There are over 5,000 instances, according to a site tracking Mastodon use, and they often follow a particular theme, such as geographical region or topic. Some require you to fill out a short application form with information like your interests or why you want to join that instance. Some servers are small and only for a small handful of friends.
There’s even a quiz that you can take to find which instance might be right for you.
The most popular instance is mastodon.online, which is also administered by the service’s founder. Bigger instances mean many of the best or shortest usernames on the server have already been taken. There’s also a list of instances you can join on Mastodon’s website.
Unlike Twitter, many of the instances that Mastodon runs on are not-for-profit, and some raise money for server costs and other expenses on sites like Patreon. It’s possible that some instances could stop operating because their administrators lose interest.
All instances have a feed just for people on that server that shows all toots posted in that instance in chronological order. But you can also just look at your personalized feed, which shows only toots from the people you follow — that’s the experience that’s most like Twitter.
Your username includes your server’s name
Following isn’t as simple as it is on Twitter. If you want to follow someone on the same instance as you, press the plus button next to their username.
But if they’re on a different instance than you, it’s best to copy and paste their entire username into Mastodon’s search box— including the part after the second “@” symbol that denotes which server they are on.
For example: @Gargron@mastodon.social is how to follow the CEO of Mastodon. Users who are not on Mastodon.Social need to copy and paste that entire string into their search box.
There’s no verification on Mastodon, and DMs are viewable by the instance administrator. Content moderation is also up to the instance administrator — Mastodon.Social, for example, bans Nazi imagery. Other servers may have looser rules.
How to find friends
Mastodon can be a bit of a ghost town when you first log on, but there are a few ways to find your old favorite tweeters on the platform. Whether they post a lot is a different question.
One of the easiest ways to find people to follow is to search “Mastodon” on Twitter, where people who have created new accounts often post their new handles. Copy and paste it into the Mastodon search box to follow them.
You can also copy and paste your Mastodon handle — with the @ symbol and domain — into your Twitter account to get your existing followers to try to join you.
There are several directories that list interesting people to follow on Mastodon.
If you’d like to try to follow the same people on Mastodon as you did on Twitter, there are several third-party apps that will try to import your follow list, although they require access to your Twitter account — be aware that you’re giving that information away to a third party.
Get tootin’
It’s time to get tooting. A first post that describes your interests or topics can help people find you.
Mastodon, like Twitter in its early days, gives users the choice to use different apps and interfaces to interact with toots and boosts.
Twitter migrants who miss TweetDeck, which displays several timelines on a desktop computer, should enable the Advanced Web Interface option in the settings to bring up a denser interface with multiple columns.
There are also several apps for iPhones and Android devices that work regardless of which instance you’re on. The main Mastodon apps work well, but there are lots of alternative clients.
Make sure to look through the settings for features that aren’t available on Twitter — like automatic post deletions and powerful block and muting features. A sensitive content feature can hide rants or NSFW posts behind a button. The latest version of Mastodon, 4.0, includes new abilities to follow hashtags, translate or edit posts, and additional content filters.
If you don’t like the instance you started on, it’s possible to export your account to another server.
Mastodon isn’t as easy to use as Twitter, nor does it have as many users generating content that will bring you back day after day. But its free, open-source approach with thousands of different servers guarantees that the platform can’t be bought for $44 billion.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
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Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.
An Amazon employee works to fulfill same-day orders during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days at an Amazon fulfillment center on December 2, 2024 in Orlando, Florida.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Images
For 10 years, Aaron Cordovez has been selling kitchen appliances on Amazon. Now he’s in a bind, because most of his products are manufactured in China.
Cordovez, co-founder of Zulay Kitchen, said his company is moving “as fast as we can” to move production to India, Mexico and other markets, where tariffs are increasing under President Donald Trump, but are mild compared with the levies imposed on goods from China. That process will likely take at least a year or two to complete, he said.
“We’re making our inventory last as long as we can,” Cordovez said in an email.
Zulay is alsotemporarily raising the price of some of its milk frothers, smores roasting sticks and other products. The company’s popular kitchen strainer now costs $12.99, up from $9.99 before Trump announced his sweeping tariff proposal earlier this month.
Amazon merchants are hiking prices for everything from diaper bags and refrigerator magnets to charm necklaces and other top-selling items as they confront higher import costs. E-commerce software company SmartScout tracked 930 products on Amazon that have seen increased prices since April 9, with an average jump of 29%.
The price hikes affect a range of categories, including clothing, jewelry, household items, office supplies, electronics and toys.
The trade war with China has threatened to upend sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, which accounts for about 60% of the company’s online sales. Many merchants are based in China or rely on the world’s second-largest economy to source and assemble their products.
Sellers are now faced with the conundrum of raising prices or eating the extra costs associated with Trump’s new tariffs. It’s an existential threat for many sellers, who subsist on razor-thin margins and have, for the last several years, dealt with rising costs on Amazon tied to storage, fulfillment, shipping and advertising fees along with pricing pressure from increased competition.
CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC earlier this month that the company was “going to try and do everything we can” to keep prices low for shoppers, including renegotiating terms with some of its suppliers. But he acknowledged some third-party sellers will “need to pass that cost” of tariffs on to consumers.
Amazon’s stock price is down 15% so far this year, sliding along with the broader market. The company reports first-quarter earnings next week.
Goods imported from China now face import duties of 145%, though Trump said Wednesday his administration is “actively” talking with China about a potential deal to lower tariffs. Chinese officials on Thursday denied that trade talks are taking place.
About 25% of the price increases observed by SmartScout were initiated by sellers based in China, said Scott Needham, the company’s CEO. Last week, stainless steel jewelry maker Ursteel hiked prices on four of its products by $6.50, while apparel brand Chouyatou raised the price of some of its dresses by $2. Both businesses are based in China’s Zhejiang province.
Anker, a Chinese electronics brand and one of Amazon’s largest sellers, has raised prices on one-fifth of its products sold in the U.S., including a portable power bank, which went up to $135 from $110, SmartScout data shows.
Representatives from Anker, Ursteel and Chouyatou didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Zulay, headquartered in Florida, is one of many U.S.-based sellers raising prices. The company is also cutting costs. Cordovez said he’s been forced to lay off 19% of his workforce and slash online ad spending by 85%.
Desert Cactus, based in Illinois, is also taking action. Joe Stefani, the company’s president, has been looking to move production of some of his brand’s college-themed merchandise out of China and into Mexico, India and Vietnam. About half of Desert Cactus’ goods come from China, while the rest are made in the U.S., Stefani said.
An Amazon worker moves a cart filled with packages at an Amazon delivery station in Alpharetta, Georgia, on Nov. 28, 2022.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
One of the company’s top products is a customizable license plate frame that’s manufactured in China. At the start of Trump’s first term in 2016, Stefani’s company paid import and shipping fees of 4% on the license plates. That rate has since skyrocketed to 170%, he said.
“The tariffs can’t stay this high,” Stefani said. “There’s so many people that just aren’t going to make it.”
Stefani said he expects Desert Cactus will end up raising prices on some products, though he’s worried shoppers might be put off by sticker shock.
“Will someone be willing to pay $50 for a hat on Amazon?” Stefani said. “You know it’s going to be expensive at the ballpark, but on Amazon we don’t know.”
Dave Dama, co-founder of health and beauty business Pure Daily Care, said the price to manufacture one of his skin-care products in China jumped to $25 from $10. Most Amazon sellers will have no choice but to raise prices, he said.
“If you were selling something for $40 and making a $7 or $8 profit at the end of the day, with these tariffs, those days are gone,” Dama said. “You can’t do that anymore. It’s unsustainable.”
Pure Daily Care plans to stagger price increases over several weeks, and only on products “we absolutely need to,” to keep Amazon’s algorithms from ranking it lower in search results or losing the valuable buy box, he said. The buy box determines which listing pops up first when a shopper clicks on a particular product, and the one that gets purchased when they tap “Add to Cart.”
An Amazon spokesperson said the company’s pricing policies continue to apply.
“As always, sellers set their own prices, and we regularly monitor how we highlight great prices as Featured Offers to provide customers with low prices across a wide selection,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Dama said his company has enough inventory for some products to last up to six months, which it aims to “stretch as long as possible” in the hope that China and the U.S. can reach a trade deal. The company is also forgoing some sales promotions and discounts, while pausing spend on some display and video ads.
Regarding his inventory, Dama said, “We can try to stretch that seven, eight, nine months, which buys us a lot more time for this thing to work out, hopefully.”