Uses and Gratifications of Alternative Social Media: Why do people use Mastodon?

The primary purpose of this investigation is to answer the research questions; 1) What are users' motivations for joining Mastodon?; 2) What are users' gratifications for using Mastodon?; and 3) What are the primary reasons that the users continue to use Mastodon? We analyzed the collected data from the perspective of the Uses and Gratifications Theory. A questionnaire was designed to measure the opinions of Mastodon users from 15 different Mastodon instances. We examined 47 items through exploratory factor analysis using principal components extraction with Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. The results extracted 7 factors of gratification sought (expectation) and 7 factors of gratification obtained. We discovered that the primary reason that the users join and use Mastodon is the ease of controlling and sheltering users' information from data mining. The findings of the gratification sought structure are similar to findings of the gratification obtained structure, and the comparison between the two groups of data suggests that users are satisfied with the ongoing use of Mastodon.