October 17 2026
I wasn’t going to blog about the Return To X fad. At least it’s voluntary, unlike the Return To Office fad. What finally inspired me was a blog post by Matt Birchler, Why does this chart just go down? The blog post spotlights this issue:
What makes Mastodon a place most people come to and go, "no thanks"? Answering this question is key if you, like me, want Mastodon to thrive.
The blog post also presents a chart of Mastodon monthly active users over the past four years. Although I won’t dispute Birchler’s general point, I think the chart is misleading, because the origin is placed just before Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022 rather than before the release of Mastodon in 2016. Birchler neglects to mention how Mastodon went from 0 to 470k monthly active users without the “help” of Musk. In any case, the chart ends with the recent count of 732k monthly Mastodon users, significant growth relative to both 2016 and 2022.
Nonetheless, Birchler’s point is that after the acquisition of Twitter, Mastodon received a massive influx of newcomers, comprising two major waves, one in late 2022, peaking at 2.6 million monthly active users, and one in 2023, when Mastodon again surpassed 2 million monthly active users. I’m not certain about the cause of the second wave; perhaps it was the rebranding of Twitter to X? Regardless of the reasons for their interest in Mastodon, most of the newcomers did not remain active.
Birchler wants Mastodon to grow:
I've gone all in on ActivityPub and have tried to get as many people as I can to join Mastodon. I've federated this blog, I maintain a custom Mastodon web UI, I make Best-o-Masto which tries to make Mastodon easier to keep up with for those who can't spend much time on social media everyday, I subscribe to several apps that make using Mastodon better, and I've donated to the foundation several times over the years. I mention all this to make clear that I'm not a Mastodon hater, I'm a lover who doesn't want it to wither away.
To be honest, I’m not sure I want Mastodon to grow. I actually never wanted Twitter to grow. I originally joined Twitter in 2008 for a developer conference (C4 in Chicago) to network with other software developers. As far as I’m concerned, Twitter was ruined by the influx of celebrities and celebrity worshippers. Thankfully the celebrities have mostly ignored Mastodon. A crucial difference between the two social networks is that Twitter needed masses of people to join, because Twitter was a publicly-traded, for-profit corporation, financed by advertising. The goal of Twitter, like other such social networks—Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok—was to maximize attention and thus eyeballs on ads. I speak of Twitter in the past tense because Twitter no longer exists; X is a somewhat different beast, whose owner drove away many advertisers and appears to have goals other than profit maximization, namely, the spreading political propaganda, though that too requires maximization of attention.
This raises an important question: should you give your attention to social media? Is social media use healthy? In November 2022, shortly after I stopped posting on Twitter due to the Musk acquisition, I wrote the blog post I don't want to go back to social media, describing a number of ways in which all forms of social media are problematic. (I also explained why the Musk acquisition triggered me to stop posting on Twitter, if you’re interested.) Three months later I wrote I do want to go back to social media, admitting that I had joined Mastodon:
I previously likened social media to an unhealthy addiction. Was I wrong about that? I don't know. It certainly appears that I'm addicted. I tried quitting, then I backtracked. Moreover, I still think that social media is problematic in a number of ways.
I can’t speak for Matt Birchler, but I can speak for myself: I am a social media addict. This is a bad habit. I wouldn’t encourage other people to take up my bad habit. I hope that cigarette smokers would not encourage other people to take up smoking. Our goal should be to decrease rather than increase the rate of smoking. My opinion is that humanity would be better off if all of the largest social networks immediately shut down. If that includes Mastodon and Bluesky, so be it. I already have an unhealthy love-hate relationship with Mastodon.
This is not to say that I find all forms of online communication unhealthy. Way back in the days of 300 baud modems, I dialed up local Bulletin Board Systems. The local aspect was crucial, because my BBS usage allowed me to make many friends in person, friends whom I would not have met otherwise. Thus, the BBS was truly a social network. If I recall correctly, the last time I made an in-person friend from a global social network was over a decade ago.
By design, Mastodon avoids maximizing your attention. It sells no ads. The only algorithm is a reverse-chronological feed of the accounts you follow, a form of usage actively discouraged by the ad-supported social networks. Infinite scrolling on Mastodon is difficult to achieve. As a consequence, it’s no wonder that casual visitors to Mastodon tend to lose interest. In the deplorable article by John Gruber, X Once Again Marks the Spot, an unapologetic, uncritical celebration of ignorance in the face of unprecedented spending on political propaganda by Elon Musk—who is practically single-handedly funding Republican midterms campaigns—one statement stands out as illuminating:
Mastodon is my favorite of the bunch and in a way it still is, but really that’s because when I go there I don’t have to be diligent to avoid wasting time.
In other words, Mastodon respects its users, doesn’t intend to waste their time. If Mastodon users decide to leave, I say good for them! But please don’t return to X. Or Threads/Facebook/Instagram. Don’t watch videos on YouTube or TikTok. There are so many better ways to spend your time. Socialize with other people in person. If you’re looking for a solitary activity, read a book. Seriously. Books are good. And you can join book clubs to both read and socialize. Feed your mind, not your addiction. Leave social media to the pathetic people like me who cannot bring themselves to leave, instead of becoming pathetic yourself. Would it be so bad if the monthly active user counts of all global social networks fell to 0? The count was 0 when I was young, and that didn’t seem so bad.