Express yourself: Users rejoice as Twitter finally adds emoji reactions to DMs

Mastodon started popping up on timelines after Twitter suspended Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hegde’s account twice. What followed was outrage against what many thought was Twitter’s high-handedness when dealing with issues like hate speech.

Many users migrated, and batted for Mastodon's stronger anti-abuse systems. This led to the social network's name trending on Twitter as users announced their new accounts. A number of users joined a 24-hour boycott of Twitter from Nov. 6 noon. In India, Twitter has more than 30 million users.

To the uninitiated, Mastodon is not a Facebook or Twitter. It's an open source network, where users can post, comment, follow other users and publish images and videos like on a conventional platform. As it’s an open source network, there is no single entity running the platform.

Mastodon is akin to an email service. You can set up an email account via your gmail or other mail account and send e-mail to users on different providers. The signup process involves creating a username, and providing email address, and password.

It was first released in October 2016 by a software developer named Eugen Rochko. The network claims to have more than 2.2 million users while Twitter has more than 300 million users.