When
Elon Musk
completed his purchase of
Twitter
last November, journalists from major news outlets such as
NBC
and the Washington Post predicted instant doom. Several tech journalists acted as online shepherds for their industry colleagues and, like Moses, nobly guided them over to the Germany-based social media platform Mastodon.
Approximately 90 days later, Mastodon is losing users. Journalists failed to create a thriving news community for the public on the platform and instead use it as more of a therapy group. According to
the
Guardian
, “The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted on its website. There were about 1.8 million active users in the first week of January, down from over 2.5 million in early December.”
Social media personalities who spent years cultivating followings found themselves suddenly talking only to each other. Twitter, for all its faults, is still the heartbeat of real-time online news. Mastodon exists not as one social media platform but as a federation of open-sourced independent servers. There were also concerns that Mastodon hosted unchecked content, such as underage pornography.
What the failed exodus to Mastodon did show, however, was how certain members of the tech journalism industry and corporate media ecosystem are primarily concerned with building their personal brands. Certainly more concerned with that interest than in doing the actual job of journalism – relaying and publishing accurate reporting. Unfortunately for them, the primary Mastodon server, “Journa.host,” centers on a collection of Twitter celebrities such as George Takei, who mostly just post about what’s happening on Twitter.
The long-term future of Twitter may still be up in the air. But their failed Mastodon takeover has shown some journalists that they have nowhere else to go.
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Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) has written for National Review, the New York Post, and Fox News and hosts the Versus Media podcast.
