'Post-Twitter' decentralized social media struggles for way forward

Japan's Misskey shows it can be tough to scale up passion projects

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Proponents of decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon and Misskey say such services can empower smaller online communities. (Source photos by Getty and logo from Misskey's website)

RYOHTAROH SATOH, Nikkei staff writer

TOKYO -- In February, a server administrator at Misskey, a Japanese Twitter-like social media service, noticed something strange: A huge number of users were complaining that they couldn't join his server. A few moments later, he found out that the email system had stopped responding due to a surge of requests to join.

A few thousand users had tried to sign up in one day, compared to an average of 10, and the sudden uptick may have had something to do with Elon Musk.

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