Twitter rival Mastodon has grown eight times its size in a matter of weeks, going from approximately 300,000 users in October to 2.5 million in November, according to a blog post by the platform’s founder, Eugen Rochko.

“We are excited to see Mastodon grow and become a household name in newsrooms across the world, and we are committed to continuing to improve our software to face up to new challenges that come with rapid growth and increasing demand,” Rochko wrote.

Mastodon isn’t the only Twitter replacement that people are turning to. There’s Post, headed up by former Waze CEO Noam Bardin, Hive, which recently relaunched after dealing with some security issues, and familiar social platforms like Discord, Tumblr, and Reddit. And despite the growing interest in something that’s not Twitter, the bird app is still hanging on; more than 17.5 million people voted in Musk’s recent poll asking if he should step down as the CEO of Twitter, after all.

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

As of Tuesday morning, Mastodon’s app stood at number 8 among free social networking apps on the Google Play Store and at number 11 in the social networking category on Apple’s app store. (Mastodon is a decentralized social network, meaning that there are also numerous third-party apps for the platform beyond its own.)

Despite Mastodon’s rapid rise, Twitter remains far larger, reporting 238 million monetizable daily users in July. The company has not reported financial metrics since then, as Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter, taking it private, in October.

Twitter restrictions mastodon

Twitter has imposed restrictions on sharing on its platform in an effort to stop some of the user losses. Links to Mastodon have been gradually being blocked since last week. As a result of a loud outcry, Musk had to cease the practice less than 24 hours after it became an explicit policy on Sunday.

In addition to Mastodon, links to Facebook, Instagram, and Truth Social were also covered by the new policy, which said that users may face suspension if they utilize any of the usernames for those platforms in their Twitter profiles.

Many users accused Elon Musk of betraying his commitment to free speech after Twitter briefly outlawed the promotion of competing for social media networks. An additional number of journalists who cover Musk were suspended by Twitter at the same time as the incident, which led to more people leaving the platform.

Rochko emphasized Musk’s enormous influence as the owner and CEO of Twitter in the blog post, which reflects the founder of Mastodon’s first comments following the link restriction.

“This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say while holding your social graph hostage,” Rochko wrote.