Compelled by Twitter India's arbitrary enforcement of its content policies, numerous Indian users are now moving to to Mastodon, a free, open-source platform ad-free decentralised platform that many are hailing as a nicer, more civilised alternative to Twitter. But there are significant drawbacks to the system that need to be considered. "Though, the Mastodon.social instance is growing in numbers and might be one of the largest, the real advantages of Mastodon will be tested when users from India start hosting their own instances and shift to a proper decentralized model. The Mastodon.social instance in the past has stopped accepting new users," an SFLC.in spokesperson told MediaNama. Advantages of Mastodon Mastodon feeds are arranged chronologically, not by algorithms: Toots are arranged in a chronological manner. Unlike Twitter, where black-boxed algorithms determine the order of tweets in your Twitter feed, only time determines their order on Mastodon. No ads: Unlike other platforms, Mastodon doesn’t rely on ads or promoted content for revenue generation. Thus, there is no targeted advertising that can skew your view. Open source: Since Mastodon is FOSS (free and open-source software), all its code is freely available, nothing is black-boxed. People can easily establish causality between code, the interface and effect. Can’t be shut down: Unlike Twitter or Facebook which can be shut down, causing users to lead their online social networks, Mastodon, due to its decentralised and open-source nature, can’t effectively be. Mastodon also offers several anti-harassment tools that are different from Twitter, Facebook: Servers can be made…
