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Chinese social media users are flocking to the decentralised Mastodon platform to find community amid crackdown at home

  • The decentralised Mastodon platform has seen the number of Chinese users surge by about 50,000 this year amid harsher social media policies in China
  • While small compared with mainstream platforms, dedicated users appreciate building small communities to discuss sensitive issues

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The number of Chinese users across instances of the decentralised social media platform Mastodon has grown nearly 50 per cent this year as social media crackdowns at home drive some to look for other places to express themselves. Photo: Shutterstock
Matt Haldane
In the weeks after a video of a woman shackled by her neck in Jiangsu province went viral in February on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, Beijing censors went to work removing posts that threatened a widespread public backlash against government officials that some charged with not doing enough to curb human trafficking. However, one social media platform with a growing number of Chinese users speaking out against the government remained out of reach for authorities.

Mastodon, an open-source microblogging software, was created by German developer Eugen Rochko in 2017 as a decentralised version of Twitter that is difficult to block or censor. It was partially a response to the control over user data exerted by Big Tech platforms, and the source code has since been used for many alternative platforms catering to those disaffected with mainstream options. Former US president Donald Trump’s Truth Social, for example, uses Mastodon code.

For Chinese users, though, the ability to build their own community outside the control of any central authority is a significant draw. From the beginning of February through August of this year, the number of people posting in Chinese on Mastodon has jumped by nearly 50,000 to about 154,000 users, who have created more than 9.5 million posts in that time, according to a bot that tracks these numbers. While small by Chinese social media standards, the interconnected network of sites – each known as a Mastodon instance – has created a place for people to air political grievances anonymously without having posts disappear overnight.

“I think users of Mastodon may have two main types of content interests. One is that they need a corner to express their personal daily life, and the other is that they want to discuss and vent their dissatisfaction with politics and society,” said a Chinese computer science master’s student who asked to go only by his English name James. He lives in Southeast Asia and runs his own Mastodon server, which includes the bot he created to track Chinese users.

Fleeing Douban

For many, discussing political issues is not a primary reason for joining Mastodon, or necessarily a consideration at all. Activity among Chinese Mastodon users tends to change based on what is happening with social media platforms in mainland China.

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