For the last three days, the word “mastodon”, which literally refers to an extinct, elephant-like mammal, has been trending on Twitter India. Indians hadn't developed an inexplicable interest in palaeontology; just that many Indian Twitter users are migrating to Mastodon, a free, open-source, ad-free decentralised platform that many have called as an alternative to Twitter. What triggered the migration (pun intended)? Discontent against Twitter had been simmering among Indian users for quite some time, but reached a crescendo when senior advocate Sanjay Hegde’s Twitter account was suspended twice for violating Twitter’s policies — first on October 26 for sharing a picture of German worker Augus Landmesser, who refused to do a Nazi salute at a rally, and then on October 27 for tweeting a poem titled “Hang him” by Gorakh Pandey. Twitter said in an email to Hegde that the account, @sanjayyuvacha will not be restored, Quint reported. Hegde has since then sent a legal notice to Twitter demanding a public apology and restoration of his account, Firstpost reported. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GGlUp-tIxM&feature=youtu.be Following this and other numerous instances of Twitter's arbitrary rule enforcement, a number of prominent Indian journalists, activists and writers, including MediaNama’s editor Nikhil Pahwa, accused Twitter of bias and announced that they are joining Mastodon. It is to be noted that most people haven’t completely left Twitter, just created accounts on Mastodon. D. Ravikumar, a DMK MP from Tamil Nadu, is also now on mastodon.social. Twitter, however, has maintained that it is “impartial” and remains committed to “inclusion and…
