This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.
In the month since billionaire Elon Musk took possession of Twitter, firing thousands of workers and contractors and throwing its blue check verification system into chaos, people have been leaving the bird app in droves. Twitter has lost more than a million users — including several prominent climate activists, scientists, and journalists. In its place, many are migrating to Mastodon, an open-source social media network where users communicate on decentralized servers.
Read more
Go Funko Yourself This Halloween
Remembering <em>Enterprise</em>: The Test Shuttle That Never Flew to Space
Apple's 12 Most Embarrassing Product Failures
Unlike Twitter’s single website, Mastodon is made up of a federation of interconnected yet independent servers, some of which are themed around a particular interest. Even though users can follow and correspond with people from different communities, they can also choose to only view posts from their local server. Several of the servers that have gained momentum in recent weeks are geared toward climate-conscious individuals and groups.
Mastodon.green, for example, is a server that says it plans to operate on clean energy and offset carbon based on the number of people in the group. The community currently boasts around 9,800 active users, who are asked to pay a monthly fee to be on the server after a certain trial period. Free sign ups are currently closed due to the unusually high number of people trying to join.
Paula Kreuzer, a climate activist based in Austria who works with Fridays for Future Vienna, is the administrator of the server climatejustice.social. She said she recently had to close that community, which she launched in early 2020, because of the massive influx of new user requests; the server, which currently has about 10,000 users, saw around 7,000 people join in the past few weeks.
Kreuzer describes climatejustice.social as a laid-back place, with less focus on research or scientific discussion and more on activism, networking, and casual conversations. The biggest change in conversation she has seen is a plethora of new users trying to get the hang of a new platform and its quirks.
“Asking questions is the best tip I can give people,” Kreuzer told Grist before she hopped on another call to introduce new German users to Mastodon.
Kim Cobb, an award-winning climate scientist and the director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, is one of the many new Mastodon users still getting a sense of the platform. She recently launched her account on the fediscience.org server, which is geared toward academics and researchers. She said she’s seen an “explosion” of users on that server in recent days, but isn’t yet ready to fully abandon Twitter herself.
“It’s sort of a gray zone right now,” she said. “So I’m waiting, I’m watching. But I’m also building.”
Historically speaking, Twitter has played an important role in building people’s awareness of environmental actions, from youth-led climate strikes to viral trash-clean-up videos. On the other hand, the bird app has also been a breeding ground for climate misinformation. Previous leadership went so far as to ban climate change propaganda on the platform, but experts warn climate disinformation could increase under Musk’s watch.
The way Mastodon is currently set up, it can be slightly easier to find a like-minded community and slightly harder for posts to reach a massive global audience compared to Twitter. Granted, users can still see public posts across most servers using the “federated timeline” view, and people are free to join multiple servers or switch an account from one server to another. Still, not all prominent climate activists are choosing to join science- or justice-themed servers. Greta Thunberg, for example, can be found on mastodon.nu, a server that is run on renewable energy but geared toward residents of Sweden and other Nordic countries.
While working out the odds and ends can be frustrating for those just joining up, some Mastodon users have found the social media platform to be a nice break from Twitter’s sometimes hostile mood.
“I’m enjoying it actually,” said Peter Gleick, an environmental scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute who recently joined Mastodon’s fediscience.org server. “The tone is nicer. The engagement is more interesting and the conversations are more in depth than on Twitter.”
Mastodon numbers are growing but it is still a relatively small social network, with around 1 million active users compared to Twitter’s roughly 238 million. Gleick, who has over 96,000 followers on Twitter, said it has been hard to wrestle with the potential of losing a large, engaged, and climate-focused audience should he leave the bird app completely. He doesn’t find Mastodon as intuitive as Twitter but, despite the hiccups, he remains intrigued. Twitter wasn’t super easy to use in its early days either, he said.
But if Musk pushes Twitter platform over the edge, he believes users will find ways to still talk, share, and work in other climate spaces online.
“We’re sort of holding our breath to see really how bad it gets,” Gleick said.
More from Gizmodo
The Best Shortcuts On Mac: Snap Windows, Text to Speech, and More
How to Delete Your Twitter Account If Elon Musk Was Your Last Straw
Sign up for Gizmodo’s Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.
TikTokers are warning her that the wedding photographer captured a huge red flag.
With 39 seconds remaining in Saturday night’s game and the score tied 29-29, Bills running back Devin Singletary took a handoff up the middle at the Dolphins’ 11-yard line, ran toward the end zone, and then purposely stopped and fell down at the 4-yard line. After the game, Bills coach Sean McDermott praised Singletary for [more]Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesMore than two decades after he came to power, President Putin’s grip on the Russian people is finally starting to falter.The war in Ukraine has opened up a credibility gap, and for the first time many Russians no longer feel they can trust what their leader is saying to them. Combined with tough economic sanctions, funds being re-allocated to the war, and conscription drives across the country, the costs of this vainglorious conquest
Even Prince Andrew will be there—but no Sussexes.
Baby, it’s cold outside, but it was warm when Elizabeth Hurley filmed her holiday movie, Christmas in the Caribbean. Not only did she have a tropical wardrobe, but she made sure her favorite turquoise-blue bikini was from her Elizabeth Hurley Beach line. The 57-year-old actress shared behind-the-scenes footage from the film of her frolicking in […]Donald Trump is urging his followers on Truth Social that the “weaponized thugs and tyrants” in the FBI and DOJ “must be dealt with.”
Jost weighed in on the drop of the former president’s $99 “digital trading cards,” a collection that’s been subject to ridicule.
If you’ve been following the discourse that came with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, then you know there’s one thing that everyone seemed to have an opinion about: Meghan’s curtsy. Chances are, you’ve seen the clip of Meghan talking about how she didn’t know how to curtsy in front of […]“I was just more concerned with safety when there are ice balls flying at people’s heads.”
Justin Mustafa, now Justin Curtis, served jail time for abusing multiple women. One says his new name puts other women at risk.
Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, died in a hospital on Saturday morning following a crowd crush outside a London concert on Thursday
Yesterday, Meghan Markle announced she guest-edited the September issue of British Vogue. She had specific instructions for the cover shoot—ones that say a lot about how she wants to showcase beauty.
Over 1,200,000 people, most of them within the Russian Federation, have used resources provided by the Ukrainian national project "Hochu zhit" ["I Want To Live"], which gives Russian soldiers an opportunity to surrender.
His wife went to the police "frantic" when she couldn't find him.
Prince Harry got a text from Prince William right after his Oprah interview and it was captured on camera during Harry & Meghan.
The Gators didn't stand a chance against Oregon State on Saturday, but at least now the team can move on to next year. There's always the scoring streak, right?
Uros Plavsic drew a technical foul early against Arizona on Saturday in Tennessee basketball's 75-70 loss.
The Princess of Wales demonstrated the gesture as a sign of respect when she said hello to the King and Queen Consort
This is a big hit. Where will Ohio State go from here? #GoBucks
"From our hearts to yours, Merry Christmas," Alex Rodriguez wrote on Instagram, posing with girlfriend Jac Cordeiro and his two daughters Natasha and Ella
