#PathMastodon: An Up-In-Coming Platform for Pathology Education Among Pathologists, Trainees, and Medical Students

Abstract

Social media use in pathology has continued to grow and become more mainstream among pathologists, trainees, and medical students over the past decade. Twitter has historically been (and still seems to be) a positive platform for the social media pathology community to engage with each other virtually (ie, PathTwitter). However, as a new era of Twitter leadership began to unfold in October 2022, a young platform called “Mastodon” began to gain notice within this community as the hashtag #PathMastodon became prevalent. Founded in 2016 by Eugen Rochko, Mastodon is a decentralized, open-sourced, ads-free platform intended to promote public knowledge in a safe and public manner. When compared with Twitter, however, Mastodon is globally much smaller, and its medical professional server called “Med-Mastodon” is more cumbersome with certain features (eg, tracking analytics and username changes). Nevertheless, this new platform, which looks and feels much like Twitter, has great potential to provide continued medical education and virtual excellence among the social media pathology community. Thus, the purpose of this review is to provide a relevant synopsis of how Mastodon, Med-Mastodon, and #PathMastodon may benefit pathologists, trainees, and medical students who use social media. A qualitative analysis of pertinent peer-reviewed and non–peer-reviewed materials relative to the topic will be performed. In addition, we will provide a comparison of Mastodon and Twitter, provide example figures of #PathMastodon and related posts, and elaborate on the importance this discussion brings to the social media pathology community.

#PathX: #PathTwitter’s Transformation and a Discussion on Different Social Media Platforms Used by Pathologists in 2024

“…Functional differences between X and Mastodon, specifically, are discussed elsewhere. 18 More studies are required to gauge Thread's capability as a social medium for pathologists given its recent public production, although experts have privacy concerns about the platform. 19…”

“…Fediverses like Mastodon (parent company: Mastodon gGmbH) and Threads (parent company: Meta) are decentralized, open-sourced, platforms that are very similar to X in that users can publish short posts with attachments (eg, images, videos, and polls) but without requiring a central operational host. Functional differences between X and Mastodon, specifically, are discussed elsewhere 18 . More studies are required to gauge Thread’s capability as a social medium for pathologists given its recent public production, although experts have privacy concerns about the platform 19 …”