Musk madness mobilises a mass march to Mastodon

Analysis of Google search data reveals that searches for Mastodon social have surged 45-fold in the UK this in the past few weeks since Elon Musk took over Twitter and hit out at Mastodon social in a now-deleted tweet.

The analysis, by cryptocurrency site Cryptobetting.org, reveals that searches for ‘Mastodon’ surged by 4,404% in the UK, 1,308% in the US, and 2,032% worldwide in November as Musk’s controversial overhaul continues to dominate the social platform.

There have now been over 920,000 searches for Mastodon worldwide so far this month, with 51,000 searches from the UK and 405,000 from the US.

This is an increase of over 45 times the average search interest when compared to national average levels in the UK over the past five years. There are similar increases seen worldwide and in the US, with search interest levels rising over 21 and 14 times above average levels, respectively.

The peak of the trend coincides with when Musk began cracking down on parody accounts, such as banning comedian Kathy Griffin and then mentioning Mastodon in a now-deleted tweet, driving users to the Twitter-alternative platform.

Searches for ‘Delete Twitter’ have also surged by 201% in the US and 102% worldwide in the last month.
There have been 129,000 searches for ‘Delete Twitter’ worldwide in the past month, with 33,000 searches from the US and 8,400 from the UK.

This could mean that Musk’s Twitter overhaul and his tweets have caused almost one million users to seek alternative platforms.

A spokesperson at Cryptobetting.org said: “Elon Musk’s takeover has been a controversial and widely-publicised event, mainly due to the conversation around free speech and impersonation, and also the sweeping effects that platform changes have on its high number of users.

“While there aren’t many social networks that can seriously compete with Twitter, it looks like we are witnessing the decline of our favourite social networks in real time, as we have done with MySpace, Bebo and Google+. While Mastodon is still a small fish in a big pond, the rapid increase in searches as people switch off from Musk-era Twitter signifies that there are many users who are looking for a new place to call home.”