The communications team at the University of Innsbruck will increasingly rely on the microblogging service Mastodon for science communication. Mastodon is a non-commercial and data protection-friendly platform with functions similar to the former Twitter. For this purpose, an instance has been created at social.uibk.ac.at on university servers, which is open to the university's organizational units. The active use of X will be significantly reduced.
The University of Innsbruck actively engages in several social networks, viewing its online presence as a vital component of both internal and external communication. With recent negative events surrounding X (formerly Twitter), the decentralized microblogging platform Mastodon has become significantly important and is now well-established. Mastodon is a part of the Fediverse, a network of open-source, decentralized, non-commercial, and privacy-focused services. The Fediverse operates as a non-profit network, devoid of advertising, filter algorithms, tracking, data marketing, and features transparent, community-managed content moderation. The University of Innsbruck's communications team supports this model, utilizing and contributing to these alternative online structures through its institutional presence on the Mastodon instance social.uibk.ac.at.
