This article <https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/7/can-mastodon-be-a-twitter-alternative> says: With Twitter in disarray since the world’s richest person took control of it last week, Mastodon, a decentralised, open alternative from privacy-obsessed Germany, has seen a flood of new users. Nevertheless, this “flood” is a mere trickle compared to the torrent of users that is Twitter -- a million or so active monthly users on the one, versus over 200 times that on the other. The decentralization of Mastodon means that no single entity can take control of it. But it also makes it harder for users to find their way around. [Mastodon creator] Rochko, whose Mastodon foundation runs on a shoestring crowdfunded budget topped up with a modest grant from the European Commission, has found a particularly receptive audience among privacy-conscious European regulators. Germany’s data protection commissioner is waging a campaign to get government bodies to close their Facebook pages, since, he says, there is no way of hosting a page there that conforms to European privacy laws. Authorities should move to the federal government’s own Mastodon instance, he says. The European Commission also maintains a server for European Union bodies to toot from. Yeah ... “toot” ...