Stephen Fry has quit Twitter and joined Mastodon

Since Elon Musk's $44bn (£38.2bn) Twitter takeover, a slew of celebrities have voluntarily parted ways with the platform. Stephen Fry is the latest to quit Twitter and has joined the likes of Shonda Rhimes, Toni Braxton, Jameela Jamil and Gigi Hadid.

The actor posted a snap of Scrabble letters spelling out "Goodbye" to his 12.5 million followers – and has since headed over to Mastodon.

The platform first experienced an influx of traffic in April following the Tesla CEO's Twitter takeover announcement.

"Mastodon.social is being slow right now, as far as I can tell because there's twice as many people using it at the same time as ever have," founder Eugen Rochko wrote at the time.

Despite having similarities to Twitter – as in users write posts for their followers to see, can attach media, and can respond to other people's posts – the decentralised platform is slightly different.

Rather than being one big social media site, users can run and host their own communities.

They can join a particular server with specific rules they want to enforce – whereas, Twitter enforces the rules of whatever Musk wants.

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Celebrities didn't hold back when deactivating their accounts, with Whoopi Goldberg calling the platform a "mess.'

The View host said: "It’s been a little over a week since Elon Musk took over Twitter and this place is a mess.

"I’m getting off today . . . I’m tired of now having certain kinds of attitudes blocked now getting back on."

Shonda Rhimes penned: "Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye."

Meanwhile, Grammy-winning singer Sara Bareilles wrote: "Welp. It’s been fun Twitter. I’m out. See you on other platforms, peeps. Sorry, this one’s just not for me."

Toni Braxton added: "I’m shocked and appalled at some of the ‘free speech’ I’ve seen on this platform since its acquisition.

"Hate speech under the veil of ‘free speech’ is unacceptable; therefore I am choosing to stay off Twitter as it is no longer a safe space for myself, my sons and other POC."

Actor Jameela Jamil also parted ways with Twitter, writing: "One good thing about Elon buying twitter is that I will *FINALLY* leave and stop being a complete menace to society on here. So it’s win win for you all really."

Model Gigi Hadid also shared that she has deactivated her account.

"For a long time, but specially with its new leadership, it’s becoming more and more of cesspool of hate and bigotry, and it’s not a place I want to be a part of," Hadid wrote on Instagram. "Only sorry to the fans, who I’ve loved connecting with for a decade on Twitter.

"I can’t say it’s a safe space for anyone, nor a social platform that will do more good than harm."

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