Mastodon has hit 2M active users today

When moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I was really surprised by the amount of new type of people that I have little to no visibility before: not super famous but good writers, teachers, niche open source enthusiasts, less known indie game devs, open source hardware manufactures, scientists, regional activists, etc. I&#x27;m really pleased with the quality of my feed and discussions that I have. Reminds me of Twitter when it was just launched.<p>People can complain about UX and the slow grow (especially compared to Threads) but the truth is - right now, there is enough audience and content to make it engaging and useful. I don&#x27;t think there is much value in the explosive growth that some people want from it.

A significant number of the people I follow on Twitter set up mastodon accounts but that kind of ran out of steam within a few months and I rarely see Mastodon mentioned anymore.<p>A much larger number have set up Threads accounts and either posting on Twitter less or are gone entirely.<p>It&#x27;s anecdotal, but I think Mastodon missed the boat, in large part because of the pretty terrible sign up experience.<p>Most people noped out at &quot;First, pick a server, but don&#x27;t worry, this list only includes the ones who promise to be safe!&quot;, most of the rest when they hit &quot;The server suggested by the person you want to follow is not taking new signups&quot;.

Here&#x27;s another tracker that shows a higher number.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fediverse.observer&#x2F;stats" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fediverse.observer&#x2F;stats</a><p>I suspect it&#x27;s hard to measure this accurately as the users are spread over several thousand servers, and presumably servers can lie about their user count. It&#x27;s like measuring how many email addresses exist, you can only estimate.<p>What matters more to me is what kind of community exists. I joined Twitter late and found it was hard to engage because it was so chaotic. People shouting past eachother or making cheap shots. Not my thing, I didn&#x27;t stay. Mastodon &quot;looks like twitter&quot; but doesn&#x27;t feel like that. We know that community-based moderation can work at scale, that&#x27;s what Reddit uses, so I&#x27;m hopeful Mastodon will keep it&#x27;s safe feeling.

Mastodon is going to hit drama very soon which may end in its demise. Meta wants to enter it so they can slurp up everything. You&#x27;re going to run into the situation of some server admins going &quot;OK sure, I will federate with Meta&quot; and others going &quot;By the power of Grayskull! I shall block Meta!&quot;.

My favorite part about Mastodon is the general lack of self-promotion. Twitter&#x2F;Instagram... are made of people perpetually preening professionally and socially. Mastodon is, for the most part, just people being weird and silly. Very refreshing.

I keep updating my Mastodon deathwatch: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.lgbt&#x2F;@Kye&#x2F;109982031390613361" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.lgbt&#x2F;@Kye&#x2F;109982031390613361</a><p>The text:<p>10k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>100k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>1,000k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>1,300k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>1,400k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>1,800k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>1,900k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>2,000k monthly active users: &quot;Mastodon is dead!&quot;<p>I&#x27;m starting to think these people aren&#x27;t real doctors.

Hasn&#x27;t threads hit over 100m? Even if 90% just signed up to check it out and never use it again, that&#x27;s a lot. And it was rushed out because twitter was busy shooting itself in the foot.<p>I&#x27;m not sure how mastodon people are so bullish on it. It&#x27;s like they never sat a normal person down and asked them to try going from 0 to &#x27;tooting&#x27;.

Compared to the meteoric rise of Threads, it&#x27;s hard to argue that they didn&#x27;t fumble the bag when the end-zone was wide open.<p>Once you get past the user-hostile joining and following process, ultimately Mastodon just has awful content discoverability since there&#x27;s no algorithmic feed available, not even good reply displays. You&#x27;re relying on your follows to retoot anything interesting, and one prolific poster can completely flood your feed.<p>It&#x27;s just not good enough. I really tried to like it, but it just isn&#x27;t.

According to Statista, there were 10 million registered users as of March 2023: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;1376022&#x2F;global-registered-mastodon-users&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;1376022&#x2F;global-registere...</a>

I hope it keeps hitting them.

Can anyone recommend a nice peer to peer social media thing?<p>Hey <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getaether.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getaether.net&#x2F;</a>

Is there a way to &#x27;get started&#x27;?<p>I saw a list of Ukraine war accounts on reddit, which as interesting as it is, isn&#x27;t the vibe I want to center my day around.

Timeline vs thread tree.<p>I strongly prefer the latter.<p>How about you?

This is a real achievement not like the bullshit Threads account merger that’s being portrayed as “omG sHaTtErInG sIgNuP rEcOrDs In ThE fEdIvErSe.”

erm, Threads hit 100M on day 5

2M what... silos? conversation happening in disconnected realms..... it&#x27;s like saying there are 2M blogs on blogger or tumblr