Mastodon was the most-favored Twitter alternative for users who quit the platform following its acquisition by Elon Musk. It provided a decentralized, open-source environment with a larger focus on user privacy and less corporate interference.

However, reports of massive drop in the number of active users shows the platform has not been very successful in retaining the users it gained.

Users Are Leaving Mastodon

Mastodon's user base has shrunk by over 30% from its peak, according to The Guardian. This number is based on data provided by the Mastodon platform, which shows the global user base fell from a peak of 2.5 million users in December 2022 to 1.8 million in the first week of 2023.

Why Are People Leaving Mastodon?

The reasons people are leaving Mastodon are multi-faceted, but there are a few main factors that seem to come up most often.

One reason is that it seemed tech-savvy users heavily dominated the platform, making it difficult for regular social media users to find their way and feel comfortable on the platform. You'd relate to this if you were among the people who joined Mastodon after Twitter's acquisition by Elon Musk.

From having to decide which server is best (a question no social media platform has asked before) to having to learn the ins and outs of how the platform works, many felt overwhelmed.

Meg Coffey, a social media strategist who spoke with The Guardian, attributed the decline in users to its being hard to use. “Everybody went and signed up [on Mastodon] and realized how hard it was, and then got back on Twitter and were like, ‘Oh, that’s, that’s hard. Maybe we won’t go there,’” she said.

While 2.5 million users may sound like a lot, it’s not that much when you spread it out over the global platform. Or when you compare it with the 330 million users on Twitter. With such a small global user base, it's easy to imagine the platform feeling empty and less engaging than other social media sites.

Users have described their timelines (and even the explore tab) as “stale” because there’s often not much interesting content to consume or engage with.

Can Mastodon Reverse the Trend?

Whether Mastodon can reverse the trend depends on the platform's vision for itself. If its goal is to be a platform for the tech-savvy, it doesn't need to worry about the decline in users. However, if it wants to be a mainstream platform that appeals to the majority of social media users, it needs to make its user experience more intuitive.