Used Mastodon for a week, then went back to twitter. The idea is great, it also works really well the problem is that there was no incentive for me to move over for good

I am curious how much growth Mastodon is seeing — certainly there are spurts of migration off Twitter, but is there a sufficient gravity to keep folks around who don't feel like they can get what they want out of Twitter?

Our community, tilde.town, has its own Mastodon instance, and let me tell you, it's so much fun to hang out with people you're actually cool with, instead of having to deal with Russian bots, horrible racists tweeting images of gore at you, and millennials making constant hot takes. I like that there's more of a curated, experience, and you can choose which instances to federate in your feed. While Mastodon has its share of racists and sexists (because we live in this hellspew of a world), at least where we are we don't have to listen to them. I would rather contribute on a community that's home-grown and hand-coded, and still have it retain the sense of community, instead of the mindless, amoral dollar grab that has become the great tragedy of the commons that is Twitter.

Find your home using joinmastodon.org or https://instances.social/

Pros:

The idea that you can have niche communities and still interact with people in general! Speaking of the community, it's so positive!

Cons:

At the moment, it still takes a lot of knowledge to run your own, however I believe in the future it will be as prevalent as email.

I love Mastodon and it pains me to read that people would rather stay within the closed walls of FB or Twitter. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course. I believe that real growth can happen using Mastodon instances that would never be possible on platforms. Imagine if we got to this point of internet history without email and it was launched here on product hunt tomorrow. Most likely, email™ would fail in the atmosphere of today's world. How will email™ support itself? How will email™ make money for its investors and the precious VCs? This sound impossible if anyone, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo can make email™ clients and use email™ free of cost, there's no future in our fictional email™ company. They have no capital to keep employees and keep working. Yet, today email is still going **because** it is a protocol that works anywhere for anyone. Generations of humans know what email is. You can't say the same for Snapchat, Instagram and even FB. Those new platforms may be getting close to being as renowned as email, but email is universal and Mastodon has that potential. When app dot net was still in its pay model, I asked a friend discouraged with Twitter, "Why don't you switch?" He told me that he felt app dot net was a country club, with its pay-to-play model. Twitter was "free." I put that word in quotes because we know that we are the product. Many people don't realize that, but those of us here know. My friend's argument works with Twitter as well, though. It is a country club. You need to be a member of an exclusive club to get messages from friends on Twitter. That is, you need to join the platform. **Today**, you need to join a Mastodon or GNU social instance to be part of the community of Mastodon. Or, you have to painstakingly setup your own instance. In order to get email, back in the day, you had to pay for CompuServe, AOL, or perhaps be lucky enough to get an address from a university. Now, getting an email address is far more easier and open. In my opinion, Mastodon is the future and that's why I choose to be there. It is sustained by the people who use it, not by the ad dollars it generates. Thus, it doesn't **have to** keep increasing its users to show a 20% profit over last year's statement. Mastodon doesn't have to introduce bloat feature after bloat feature to draw more people to drive more profit. Mastodon isn't a product. Mastodon is a communication tool. Remember those?

I've been using Mastodon for well over a month and it is the most wholesome social media experience I've had in recent memory. Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit have become crowded spaces full of memes, flamewars, and spam content. Mastodon feels much more personal. If I ever feel like my instance is getting too crowded, I can always migrate to another one and stay within the network.

Importantly, it is the only social media platform I've used where users can have a constructive debate about the design of the platform and contribute on GitHub.

Pros:

The knowledge that your data is not being monetized. No ads. Wholesome friendly community. Great Android and Linux apps.

Cons:

My friends aren't there (but I made new ones on Mastodon!) . Userbase leans heavily towards developers & open-source enthusiasts

Such an amazing idea. Need to add some more features to attract people. Loved the design.