As part of our commitment to supporting the growth and operational capabilities of Mastodon, we have established a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity in the United States aimed at facilitating our efforts, including being able to receive tax-deductible U.S. donations and in-kind support … | Continue reading
After we’ve released our new line of merch last year, we’ve heard a lot of questions about a potential stuffed toy. After all, our official mascot is so suitable. But it is, problematically, a two-dimensional character. We sat down with our artist, Dopatwo, to try and imagine wha … | Continue reading
At the beginning of February, our team attended our very first conference at FOSDEM in Brussels. As a remote-only company, it was also the first time a lot of us met each other in real life. It was a very fun time, and a lot of people came up to take selfies in front of our compa … | Continue reading
In our most recent Mastodon for Android release, we’re testing a new feature aimed to curb unneccesary negativity that comes from being on the Internet. Complete strangers using an overly familiar tone, offering unsolicited advice, or starting arguments that are completely beside … | Continue reading
Today we would like to thank Sujitech for kindly donating $100k USD to Mastodon, by far the largest single donation to our non-profit so far. Building Mastodon, which encompasses the core software on one end, and two native mobile applications on the other, is not cheap, and we c … | Continue reading
The most recent update of Mastodon for Android introduces a highly anticipated feature–lists. With the new update, you now have the ability to create custom lists and categorize your follows based on specific topics or interests, while removing them from your home feed. This not … | Continue reading
Some of your were asking for it, some of you had no idea it was coming. The 2022 Annual Report is ready! As a non-profit organization supported exclusively by donations, we like to keep our community updated on our yearly progress, and 2022 was an interesting year to say the leas … | Continue reading
As Mastodon continues to grow, we’d like to make sure we’re doing all we can to help you connect with your friends and your interests. Most importantly, we want to bring you features that make it much easier to connect with people that matter to you. In this version we overhauled … | Continue reading
To help us raise more funds for our development efforts, we are launching a new line of merchandise for Mastodon including t-shirts, mugs, enamel pins, and stickers. Our artist, Dopatwo, has come up with brand new, exclusive designs for each item, and we’ve partnered with FRESH M … | Continue reading
Today, Meta is launching its new microblogging platform called Threads. What is noteworthy about this launch is that Threads intends to become part of the decentralized social web by using the same standard protocol as Mastodon, ActivityPub. There’s been a lot of speculation arou … | Continue reading
While usually our app updates don’t get a dedicated blog post, this one is a bit bigger and provides a good opportunity to reflect on how the Android app changed since launch roughly a year ago. Today, Mastodon for Android has received a complete Material You redesign. We left no … | Continue reading
Today we’re making signing up on Mastodon easier than ever before. We understand that deciding which Mastodon service provider to kick off your experience with can be confusing. We know this is a completely new concept for many people, since traditionally the platform and the ser … | Continue reading
On Dec 16, Twitter suspended our @joinmastodon account after we shared a link to the newly registered Mastodon account of @ElonJet, an account that broadcasts public flight path data of Elon Musk’s private jet, which was previously suspended from Twitter itself. At the same time, … | Continue reading
On Dec 16, Twitter suspended our @joinmastodon account after we shared a link to the newly registered Mastodon account of @ElonJet, an account that broadcasts public flight path data of Elon Musk’s private jet, which was previously suspended from Twitter itself. At the same time, … | Continue reading
My instance mastodon.social has recently surpassed 43,000 users. I have closed registrations both to have more time to investigate the infrastructure and ensure a good experience for existing users, and to encourage more decentralization in the network (with a wonderful effect — … | Continue reading
I’m pleased to announce that our new joinmastodon.org website is now live. We teamed up with the design agency Oak to give our project a modern and professional presence. The website is responsible for explaining what Mastodon is, why it is better than other social media platform … | Continue reading
I’m pleased to announce that our new joinmastodon.org website is now live. We teamed up with the design agency Oak to give our project a modern and professional presence. The website is responsible for explaining what Mastodon is, why it is better than other social media platform … | Continue reading
We’re teaming up with the design agency Oak to update our homepage and our brand. We’re leaving the ubiquitous blue that every social app seems to have behind in favour of a vibrant purple. Our logo also gets some subtle shape fixes that makes it look more precise. I originally p … | Continue reading
The news of Elon Musk buying Twitter has put Mastodon into the public spotlight as an alternative social network, rapidly exploding our growth with over 30,000 new users in just a single day. This is because at Mastodon, we present a vision of social media that cannot be bought a … | Continue reading
With the release of our Android app on the Play Store we are now present on both major mobile platforms. The apps are gaining overwhelmingly positive reviews, some even going so far as to claim that our onboarding is smoother than any other social media platform’s; our iOS app is … | Continue reading
With the release of our Android app on the Play Store we are now present on both major mobile platforms. The apps are gaining overwhelmingly positive reviews, some even going so far as to claim that our onboarding is smoother than any other social media platform’s; our iOS app is … | Continue reading
Work on multiple features in this release has been kindly sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the Prototype Fund. We’ve added one of the most requested functions among our competitors, the ability to edit posts. Since older Mastodon versions … | Continue reading
Following the successful launch of our official iOS app, in January we’ve begun the development of an Android version. We continue working with the NYC design agency Lickability and welcome Gregory Klyushnikov, better known as grishka on the fediverse, as the lead Android develop … | Continue reading
Disclaimer: Since Mastodon is decentralized, different Mastodon servers have a different view of the network depending on user activity, and providing an objective data summary across the entire network is not currently possible. Data provided in this blog post is provided as-see … | Continue reading
From media reports and individual findings that various people have presented to us, it seems that the new social media platform owned by the former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, so-called Truth Social, is using Mastodon’s source code with various visual adjust … | Continue reading
On behalf of the EUNOMIA project, in which I represent Mastodon, I am happy to announce that after nearly 3 years of development there is now a public pilot for the Mastodon community.But first, what is EUNOMIA and who is EUNOMIA? EUNOMIA is a “digital companion” for social media … | Continue reading
On behalf of the EUNOMIA project, in which I represent Mastodon, I am happy to announce that after nearly 3 years of development there is now a public pilot for the Mastodon community. But first, what is EUNOMIA and who is EUNOMIA? EUNOMIA is a “digital companion” for social medi … | Continue reading
In June, I was able to officially register Mastodon gGmbH after nearly 8 months of legal work (“gGmbH” means “non-profit limited liability company”). A non-profit limited liability company in Germany is structered and operates similarly to a for-profit limited liability company w … | Continue reading
One of the ways Mastodon sets itself apart from current-day Twitter is its API-first approach (every function available through the web interface is available through the API, in fact, our web client is just an API client that runs in the browser). A third-party app ecosystem con … | Continue reading
It’s Mastodon 3.3 time 🎉 We’ve got security fixes, performance fixes, new moderation tools and quality of life features! | Continue reading
It’s Mastodon 3.3 time 🎉 We’ve got security fixes, performance fixes, new moderation tools and quality of life features! | Continue reading
An ever growing problem of the modern social media-rich world is misinformation. The trust that was previously placed into government officials and journalism has eroded; the internet gave everyone a voice but with it made it so much more difficult to distinguish truth from fabri … | Continue reading
An ever growing problem of the modern social media-rich world is misinformation. The trust that was previously placed into government officials and journalism has eroded; the internet gave everyone a voice but with it made it so much more difficult to distinguish truth from fabri … | Continue reading
The new Mastodon release brings you a much better audio player and improved support for different audio and video formats, as well as some additional security mechanisms.The audio player has been completely reworked to have a more eye-catching design. It will extract album art fr … | Continue reading
The new Mastodon release brings you a much better audio player and improved support for different audio and video formats, as well as some additional security mechanisms.The audio player has been completely reworked to have a more eye-catching design. It will extract album art fr … | Continue reading
Since Mastodon 2.7, it is actually possible to let users sign up through your app, instead of asking them to go to a Mastodon website directly and then return. Let’s go over how this can be done. | Continue reading
New REST APIs Profile directory The profile directory is a way to discover users who want to be discovered. To fetch the profile directory, access GET /api/v1/directory with the possible params local (boolean) and order (new or active). Pagination is accomplished using offset and … | Continue reading
Since Mastodon 2.7, it is actually possible to let users sign up through your app, instead of asking them to go to a Mastodon website directly and then return. Let’s go over how this can be done. | Continue reading
New REST APIs Profile directory The profile directory is a way to discover users who want to be discovered. To fetch the profile directory, access GET /api/v1/directory with the possible params local (boolean) and order (new or active). Pagination is accomplished using offset and … | Continue reading
It’s finally here! Mastodon 3.0 is live! The team has been hard at work on making sure that this release is one of our most user-friendly yet with some exciting new features! Here are just a few: Stronger anti-harassment tools We’re always looking for new ways to provide users an … | Continue reading
With the sad news that KNZK was shutting down we thought it might be useful for people to have a refresher on the features that Mastodon has built in that make moving instances easy and painless.Backing up Your Data Data export If you are moving to a new instance the first thi … | Continue reading
Mastodon is completely opposed to Gab’s project and philosophy, which seeks to monetize and platform racist content while hiding behind the banner of free speech. Mastodon remains committed to standing up against hate speech; for example, our new server covenant means we only lis … | Continue reading
After crowdfunding millions of dollars, social media platform Gab abandoned its own code and switched to the freely available Mastodon software in early 2019 as a way of circumventing Google’s and Apple’s ban on their own app from their app stores, since offering Mastodon’s clien … | Continue reading
One of the biggest obstacles for new users to Mastodon has been the multi-column UI. For users accustomed to the single-column layouts of Twitter or Tumblr, Mastodon’s multi-column layout can be overwhelming. At Mastodon, we want users’ first-day experience with us to be a positi … | Continue reading
With the sad news that KNZK was shutting down we thought it might be useful for people to have a refresher on the features that Mastodon has built in that make moving instances easy and painless.Backing up Your Data Data export If you are moving to a new instance the first thi … | Continue reading
Although Mastodon has no central authority, we as a project still want to provide a safer experience than found on Twitter or Reddit. One of the things that gave impetus to the creation of Mastodon was a lack of moderation on Twitter against hate groups. The “no nazis” rule of th … | Continue reading
Using the Blurhash algorithm in Mastodon 2.8.1 to generate prettier previews for sensitive media | Continue reading
The latest point release of Mastodon adds a small new feature that might have a significant impact on all adult content creators on the platform. The feature has a fancy, memorable name: Blurhash. But first, let’s talk about how adult content works on Mastodon. Mastodon allows yo … | Continue reading