With the apparent impending downfall of Twitter on the horizon following Elon Musk’s takeover, social media platform Mastodon appears to be a front-runner in terms of a potential rival platform – so much so that it found itself the subject of an awful NSFW joke by Musk that he later deleted.
Musk’s terrible pun and attempted dig at Mastodon was screengrabbed before being deleted and crudely associated the platform's name with the word “masturbate”. According to Entrepreneur, Musk tweeted: “If you don’t like Twitter anymore, there is [an] awesome site called Masterbatedone.”
But the billionaire and new owner of Twitter wasn’t done yet, as he followed it up, writing: “What do you call someone who is a master at baiting?”
The joke was so bad that it was ratioed by a French creator before Musk deleted it.
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\u201cA French creator managed to ratio Elon Musk before he deleted his tweet. One of France\u2019s largest news networks covered the story of his victory.\u201d— Jake Lucky (@Jake Lucky) 1667865258
On 27 October, Musk officially acquired Twitter and has since been implementing new rules, including permanently deleted parody accounts, seemingly prompted by those attempting to parody him.
He has also said he will institute an $8 per month fee for blue tick verification and has instigated significant layoffs at the company.
Since Musk’s takeover, many users have deleted their Twitter accounts and are migrating to other social media platforms. The BBC reports Masatdon has more than 230,000 new users have joined in the last week.
In an interview with TIME Magazine, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko said he disagrees with Musk’s view on free speech, which researchers from Montclair State University found actually increased on Twitter immediately following the takeover from Musk.
Rochko argued: “Allowing free speech by just allowing all speech is not actually leading to free speech, it just leads to a cesspit of hate.”
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