Straddling Two Platforms: From Twitter to Mastodon, an Analysis of the Evolution of an Unfinished Social Media Migration

TL;DR

This study analyzes the partial migration of 19,000 users from Twitter to Mastodon following Elon Musk's acquisition, highlighting community fragmentation and the challenges of complete platform transition.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of user migration patterns and community dynamics during the transition from Twitter to Mastodon after a major platform change.

Findings

Migration was a reactive response to Twitter's changes.

Users preferred to straddle both platforms rather than fully migrate.

Decentralization led to community fragmentation and social capital loss.

Abstract

Social media have been fundamental in the daily lives of millions of people, but they have raised concerns about content moderation policies, the management of personal data, and their commercial exploitation. The acquisition of Twitter (now X) by Elon Musk in 2022 generated concerns among Twitter users regarding changes in the platform's direction, prompting a migration campaign by some user groups to the federated network Mastodon. This study reviews the onboarding of users to this decentralised platform between 2016 and 2022 and analyses the migration of 19,000 users who identified themselves as supporters of the platform switch. The results show that the migration campaign was a reactive response to Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and was led by a group of highly active academics, scientists, and journalists. However, a complete transition was not realised, as users preferred to straddle their presence on both platforms. Mastodon's decentralisation made it difficult to exactly replicate Twitter's communities, resulting in a partial loss of these users' social capital and greater fragmentation of these user communities, which highlights the intrinsic differences between both platforms.