At the end of October, the social platforms Discord and Mastodon perked up. Twitter users went there looking for an alternative platform after Elon Musk bought the microblogging service.
Days before Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, essayist and transgender community member Cassie LaBelle (@CassieCeleste) joined Discord and set up a server there. She argued her decision for security reasons. Cassie noted that Twitter has so far been a relatively safe platform for transgender people. Those who feared discrimination could feel quite at ease here. Having bought the social network, Musk announced that there would no longer be content moderation rules here. After that, the feeling of security evaporated. Such innovations threaten gender atypical people with powerful hate and trolling, which they will inevitably face.
Some Twitter regulars have decided to go off because they don't want to leave valuable content on a social network now in the hands of the richest man on the planet. They have created profiles in Mastodon and Discord and are actively informing their subscribers about how to find them there.
The decentralized social network Mastodon has already begun to benefit from the current situation. The founder of this microblogging service, Yevgeny Rochko, said that between October 20-27 alone, his network increased by about 18,000 new accounts. At the same time, many among those who used the #TwitterMigration hashtag in their posts specified that they are not going to completely remove themselves from Twitter yet.
Elon Musk is the main, but not the only reason that caused the increased interest of Twitterers in alternatives. According to Reuters, Twitter has seen a steady churn of its most active users since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. Among the most probable reasons are the sharpness of discourse in the social network and its innovation.