If you’re thinking about quitting Elon Musk’s Twitter, here’s how to use alternative Mastodon
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.
You can follow me at the address @kif@cybervillians.com.
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.
Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.
The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.
“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”
Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.
Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.
It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”
The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.
“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.
The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.
Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.
Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.
Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.
The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.
The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.
Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.
The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.
The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.
In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.
Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.
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