Pforzheim opts for Mastodon as an alternate social media platform to Twitter
Pforzheim Switches to Mastodon: A Step Towards Privacy and Decentralization
The city of Pforzheim, Germany, has made a significant move in the digital landscape by switching its press team's social media presence from Twitter to Mastodon. This change comes after a prolonged absence on Twitter, with the last post dated October 10.
Mastodon, a decentralized and privacy-focused social media platform, has been the city's editorial account's new home since May 2023. The city's Mastodon account, bawu.social/@stadtpforzheim, offers users the opportunity to follow along with the city's updates without the need for their own social media account, as Mastodon allows the embedding of content on homepages.
This shift towards Mastodon suggests a growing trend of users and organizations leaving Twitter for more secure and flexible platforms. The decision to leave Twitter, now known as "X," is largely due to the platform's controversial management and content issues, including erratic usage rules, pricing models, and the spreading of right-wing extremist conspiracy theories.
Mastodon's architecture supports enhanced privacy, autonomy, moderation tailored to community preferences, and transparency, contrasting with Twitter's centralized, algorithm-driven, and commercially focused platform.
Unlike Twitter, which is a single centralized platform controlling all user data and policies, Mastodon consists of independently hosted servers (called instances) that communicate via a shared protocol (ActivityPub). This structure empowers users to select or create servers whose policies and communities align with their preferences.
Mastodon’s decentralized nature reduces centralized data collection and tracking, limiting exposure to targeted advertising and data exploitation common on Twitter. Each instance stores user data locally rather than in a global data pool, enhancing privacy protections. Mastodon allows extensive message privacy controls, including public, unlisted, followers-only, or direct messages. Users can also designate their entire accounts as private, further safeguarding personal information.
Instead of a single global moderation policy, Mastodon empowers each server to moderate content according to local norms and community standards. This flexible moderation reduces arbitrary censorship while addressing misinformation, harassment, or harmful content more responsively at local levels.
Mastodon is open-source, meaning its code is publicly available for inspection, fostering trust by allowing anyone to audit the algorithms and the platform’s functioning. Users benefit from longer posts (up to 500 characters or more) and the ability to use content warnings to hide spoilers, NSFW content, or sensitive material behind a click-to-view warning. The federated timeline aggregates content across servers, promoting diverse conversations rather than a single global feed dominated by algorithmic curation.
The city of Pforzheim's decision to leave Twitter/X is likely to be followed by other users and organizations seeking a more secure and flexible social media platform. Users can set up an account on any Mastodon server, such as mastodon.social based in Germany, and find other accounts using the integrated search function. A search with the term "pforzheim" leads to the Mastodon account of the city of Pforzheim and the editorial account of Suden at sueden.social/pfbits.
[1] https://joinmastodon.org/about [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(social_network) [3] https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/05/25/mastodon-is-now-open-source-software.html
Technology has played a significant role in the city's decision to switch social media platforms, with Mastodon, a social-media platform known for its focus on privacy and decentralization, becoming the new home for Pforzheim's press team. This change in entertainment and digital communication platform offers users an chance to engage with the city's updates without the need for a social-media account, as Mastodon allows content to be embedded on homepages.
