Mastodon loses hundreds of thousands of users weeks after peak in popularity

Meg Coffey, an Australia-based social media strategist explained to The Guardian how the relative simplicity of platforms like Twitter makes them more accessible, “Twitter, in its most basic form is simple. You can open up an app or open up a website, type some words, and you’re done. I mean, it was a basic SMS platform. Everybody went and signed up [on Mastodon] and realised how hard it was, and then got back on Twitter and were like, ‘Oh, that’s, that’s hard. Maybe we won’t go there’”

According to Coffey, the influx of Twitter users from the platform around November 5 presented a great opportunity for Mastodon. Concurrently, there was a sudden spike in the number of users of Mastodon, with upticks coinciding with controversial decisions taken and statements made by Twitter chief Elon Musk.

And there was no shortage of controversial decisions. Shortly after Musk took control of the social media platform, it fired thousands of workers; it made changes to the verification policy, causing chaos and confusion on the platform; it reinstated the account of former US president Donald Trump; and briefly, even the account of controversial artist Kanye West, before he was suspended again.

Coffey told The Guardian that Mastodon may have proven to be too complicated for many users who might have struggled to “port” the community that they were interacting with on Twitter before they left it. Many of these users may have gone back to Twitter, while many others may have even left social media entirely.