Firefox and Tumblr join rush to support Mastodon social network

Elon Musk admits banning links to Twitter rival was a mistake

Elon Musk's chaotic autumn at Twitter has produced one clear winner: Mastodon, the open-source social network, has now grown to 2.5m users - triggering a land-grab for space on it from groups including browser makers, cryptocurrency advocates and other social networks.

Despite the Twitter CEO's best efforts to disparage the rival platform, Mastodon has grown by more than 800%, according to its founder and lead developer, Eugen Rochko, who said on Tuesday that it had jumped from approximately 300k monthly active users to 2.5m between the months of October and November, with more and more journalists, political figures, writers, actors and organisations moving over".