The 2022 Twitter Migration

Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk (from Wikipedia CC-by-sa)

Elon Musk published his first tweet on his personal Twitter account in June 2010. In 2017, in response to a tweet suggesting Musk buy Twitter, he replied, "How much is it?"

On April 14, 2022, Musk proposed to buy out Twitter, Inc., for $43 billion, after previously acquiring 9.1% of the company's stock for $2.64 billion, becoming its largest single shareholder. Twitter had then invited Musk to join their board of directors, which Musk accepted before changing his mind. In response to Musk's proposal, Twitter announced a "poison pill" strategy the next day to allow shareholders to purchase additional stock in the event a buyout should occur. On April 25, Twitter's board of directors unanimously accepted Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion, with the company set to be privatized. As of April 2022, the acquisition is pending approval from regulators and shareholders.

Timetable

Date	Twitter	Fediverse
April 4, 2022	Musk announced that he had acquired 9.1 percent of Twitter's stock for $2.64 billion on March 14.	First surge of former Twitter users joined the Fediverse.
April 14, 2022	Musk proposed to buy out Twitter for $43 billion.	Second surge came to the Fediverse.
April 25, 2022	Twitter's board of directors unanimously accepted Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion.	mastodon.social had performance issues because of all the new users. German comedian [1] joined mastodon.social and later moved to edi.social.
April 27, 2022		According to Eugen Rochko 93,603 new users have joined Mastodon since end of march. The group askFedi_de was created to help new users who have questions and old users who have answers find each other.
April 28, 2022		EU Voice, the instance for EU institutions, which was already setup in February, was announced. mstdn.social servers were upgraded to keep up with the new users.
October 27, 2022	Musk finally acquires Twitter	4th surge to the Fediverse

Musk's views on "Free Speech"

The surge to the Fediverse

On April 4th, with Musk's first announcement there was the first surge of people joining the Fediverse and leaving Twitter behind (or not). The #Introduction and #NeuHier ("new here" in German) hashtags were trending on many Mastodon instances. On the next day it calmed down again.
On April 14th came the next surge, after Musk announced to buy Twitter. This one was bigger and lasted longer than a day.
But the really big surge started on April 25th, when Twitter accepted Musk's offer.

Fediverse veterans stepped up and welcomed the new users with open arms. A lot of tips and resources were shared and questions were answered. The group askFedi_de was created to help new German-language users who have questions and old users who have answers find each other.

Meanwhile on Twitter the number of users actually went up by 14 Million in 3 days.

What it meant for admins

On April 27, 2022 David Revoy tooted this painting of his with the caption "Mastodon Admins this week"

Lots of instances where overwhelmed by the number of new and active users on their servers. Mastodon's poster-instance mastodon.social slowed down significantly for 2 days. Mstdn.social, another big instance, had to upgrade their server. Mastodon.art, a big artsy Mastodon instance had to upgrade their servers 4 times about doubling their resources.

The graph of new users on climatejustice.social from April 5, 2022 - May 4, 2022

Other instances like climatejustice.social had troubles with signups as their free email provider only allowed 200 (signup) emails sent out a day. As you can see on the screenshot on the side signups went down after 2 days, because the backlog couldn't be handled.