  The primary purpose of this investigation is to answer the research
questions; 1) What are users' motivations for joining Mastodon?; 2) What are
users' gratifications for using Mastodon?; and 3) What are the primary reasons
that the users continue to use Mastodon? We analyzed the collected data from
the perspective of the Uses and Gratifications Theory. A questionnaire was
designed to measure the opinions of Mastodon users from 15 different Mastodon
instances. We examined 47 items through exploratory factor analysis using
principal components extraction with Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. The
results extracted 7 factors of gratification sought (expectation) and 7 factors
of gratification obtained. We discovered that the primary reason that the users
join and use Mastodon is the ease of controlling and sheltering users'
information from data mining. The findings of the gratification sought
structure are similar to findings of the gratification obtained structure, and
the comparison between the two groups of data suggests that users are satisfied
with the ongoing use of Mastodon.
