11/09/2022

Twitter Users Have Caused a Mastodon Meltdown

The network’s servers are overrun by almost half a million new sign-ups

Fosstodon is an online community where people chat about open source tech. They talk about VR and tech gear, but they also post pictures of changing autumn leaves and pets. It has been a small, tight-knit community for five years ever since its founders moved from Google+ to Mastodon.

But on Monday, it went offline. The culprit was an influx of new users spurred by Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, forcing Fosstodon to migrate its data to a larger server.

Since Musk bought the bird app last month, users are looking for ways to access Mastodon, the open source microblogging platform that isn't quite Twitter but seems to be the closest thing to it, and they're signing up for its many servers in droves. And Fosstodon, whose user-ship has grown from a list of about 3,000 preapproved members to an unwieldy 40,000, is far from the only server on the network to run into trouble.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.