The Twitter world is in turmoil at the moment...to say the least. With the new "Chief Twit,"

Users and advertisers have fled from the app in search of greener pastures.

Many Twitter alternatives have stepped up to take the popular app's place when rivalry is at its weakest.

Cohost, B-Heard, and CounterSocial provide saferspaces for users fearful of "free speech."

On Twitter, however, Mastodon seems to be gaining the most traction lately.

Mastodon is decentralized social media. Twitter operates like a festival, but Mastodon is like a strip mall.

A network of servers is called an "instance" and is managed by users, so signing up for it is more difficult

The first thing you need to do is choose a server, or even create your own.

It's easy to sign up for Mastodon. The app asks users to join servers after clicking "Get Started."

At the moment, Mastodon has a very small user base, sitting at around 600,000 or so active users (mostly Europeans). Work, hobby, or regional servers.