CLOSED: [2022-04-27 Wed 21:12] :PROPERTIES: :ID: 2022-04-27-Mastodon-Has-Surpassed-Twitter :CREATED: [2022-04-27 Wed 20:18] :END: :LOGBOOK: - State "DONE" from "NEXT" [2022-04-27 Wed 21:12] :END: [[id:2017-11-26-Mastodon][I started my first Mastodon account in 2017-11]] while having 650 followers on Twitter which I already joined 2009-09, running for eight years back then. I reached 650 followers on Mastodon in 2021-09 which is only four years later. So my account gained same popularity in half of the time. As of 2022-04-27, *the numbers of followers on [[https://graz.social/@publicvoit][my current Mastodon account]] is larger than the number of followers of [[https://twitter.com/n0v0id][my Twitter account]].* If you're searching for =@publicvoit@karl-voit.at= on Mastodon, you'll always find my current Mastodon account. Therefore, it took Mastodon to start from scratch and surpass my Twitter popularity just in about four and a half years. According to the trend of the most recent months, this should have happened not sooner than 2021-08. Due to [[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61222470][the recent quirk of Elon Musk to buy Twitter]] for [[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/elon-musk-un-world-hunger-famine/][6.66 times the money he would have to spend to end world hunger]], there was a huge amount of [[https://joinmastodon.org/][people creating Mastodon accounts]] on all instances. It was a pleasure to watch the rates of growth everywhere. User interaction on Mastodon was always been more intense and better in almost any aspect. While Twitter still has the more influential people, Mastodon feels more "at home" and people seem to be more friendly in general. Feature-wise, Mastodon has overtaken Twitter a long time ago. Users are able to [[https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/preferences/][define a set of languages]] so that their timelines are not spammed with languages they can't read. You can have more fine-grained filters. There are [[https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/][more options for visibility of a new toot]]. [[https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/][Downloading your own data for backup or easy moving your account from one instant to another]] is very easy and smooth. [[id:2020-05-17-graz-social][I have tested account migration myself]] and it was a great experience. Users of Twitter would be impressed about the absence of an advertisement hell in your time-line, no secret algorithms that [[https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1034515760981336064][hide important messages from your eyes]]. No lock-in effect and a maximum level of freedom. Furthermore, the default web interface does not suck at all. Twitter has lost me there years ago. There is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication][2FA]] with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password][TOTP]] as well as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication][FIDO2]] for state-of-the-art account security. Many different Mastodon clients are available for all kinds of platforms. The development of Mastodon is open and participation is welcome. I'll probably stay on Twitter mostly for reading. There is a cross-poster service in-place which allows me to use Mastodon as my main account, syncing toots over to Twitter. However, followers on Twitter do miss all my Mastodon boosts because Twitter doesn't allow them to be synced. Well, for the most part, I don't care about Twitter so much any more and the number of followers do suggest that more and more people do think in a similar way.