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
In this release: Polls, new tools for managing followers, new frontpage design, new admin features, Keybase integration, and more | Continue reading
In this long-awaited release: Polls, new tools for managing followers, new frontpage design, new admin features, Keybase integration, and more. A poll Mastodon now has a poll feature. Instead of attaching images or video to your post, you can ask your followers to choose an answe … | Continue reading
We have published a 1-click install image on DigitalOcean. This reduces the initial time investment in self-hosting Mastodon substantially. You create a new droplet, choose the Mastodon image, and once it boots up, you are taken through an interactive setup prompt.The only necess … | Continue reading
Can you imagine Facebook closing registrations and saying “Sorry, we have too many users already, you can go sign up on Twitter instead”? And yet, this sort of situation comes up with Mastodon every so often, in regards to the mastodon.social server.You see, Mastodon is decentral … | Continue reading
Can you imagine Facebook closing registrations and saying “Sorry, we have too many users already, you can go sign up on Twitter instead”? And yet, this sort of situation comes up with Mastodon every so often, in regards to the mastodon.social server.You see, Mastodon is decentral … | Continue reading
In this release: New profile directory, new tutorial, new public hashtag pages and more moderation tools | Continue reading
Polish translation is available: Mastodon 2.7 The fresh release of Mastodon brings long-overdue improvements to discoverability of content and the administration interface, as well as a large number of bug fixes and extra polish. The 2.7 release consists of 376 commits by 36 cont … | Continue reading
Reasons why you should care about how your social network is run and structured | Continue reading
Japanese translation is available: なぜ脱中央集権（decentralization）が重要なのか？ I’ve been writing about Mastodon for two whole years now, and it occurred to me that at no point did I lay out why anyone should care about decentralization in clear and concise text. I have, of course, explained … | Continue reading
Inspired by a joke post I decided to go ahead and compile a list of the most shared things on Mastodon in 2018. | Continue reading
A lot of artists have lost their blogs in the Tumblr purge. Here are 5 reasons why Mastodon is the perfect alternative. | Continue reading
After Apple has delisted the Tumblr app from its store citing a large amount of adult content on the site, artists and other creators are reporting having their blogs deleted, and are now looking for alternatives. Before choosing another commercial solution like Twitter, let me o … | Continue reading
After more than a month of work, I am happy to announce the new version of Mastodon, with improved visuals, a new way to assert your identity, and a lot of bug fixes.Verification Verifying identity in a network with no central authority is not straightforward. But there is a way. … | Continue reading
Mastodon was first announced to the public through Hacker News, a link aggregator site for programmers, on October 6, 2016. Now we’re celebrating the 2 year anniversary! 🎉 | Continue reading
Mastodon was first announced to the public through Hacker News, a link aggregator site for programmers, on October 6, 2016. Now we’re celebrating the 2 year anniversary! 🎉 | Continue reading
Mastodon 2.5 is the 100th released version of Mastodon since the project’s inception almost 2 years ago.It brings a variety of improvements to the software, the full list of which is available in the changelog. Public profile page The public areas of the web interface have be … | Continue reading
Mastodon 2.5 is the 100th released version of Mastodon since the project’s inception almost 2 years ago.It brings a variety of improvements to the software, the full list of which is available in the changelog. Public profile page The public areas of the web interface have been … | Continue reading
So you want to join Mastodon and get tooting. Great! Here’s how to dive straight in. | Continue reading
Polish translation is available: Przewodnik po Mastodonie So you want to join Mastodon and get tooting. Great! Here’s how to dive straight in. Let’s start with the basics. What is this? Mastodon is a microblogging platform akin to others you may have seen, such as Twitter, but in … | Continue reading
A year ago I wrote about Mastodon’s improvements over Twitter’s lacking protections against abuse and harassment. Development in that area has not been standing still, and it’s about time we do another comparison. | Continue reading
A year ago I wrote about Mastodon’s improvements over Twitter’s lacking protections against abuse and harassment. Development in that area has not been standing still, and it’s about time we do another comparison. | Continue reading
In the previous tutorial we have learned how to send a reply to another ActivityPub server, and we have used mostly static parts to do it. Now it’s time to talk about how to subscribe to other people and receive messages.The inbox Primarily this means having a publicly accessible … | Continue reading
In the previous tutorial we have learned how to send a reply to another ActivityPub server, and we have used mostly static parts to do it. Now it’s time to talk about how to subscribe to other people and receive messages.The inbox Primarily this means having a publicly accessible … | Continue reading
We often tout things like “Mastodon is based on open web protocols” as one of its advantages. I want to elaborate why exactly that’s a good thing. | Continue reading
We often tout things like “Mastodon is based on open web protocols” as one of its advantages. I want to elaborate why exactly that’s a good thing. | Continue reading
A committee of members of the European Parliament have voted to approve Article 11 and Article 13, which pose a risk to the decentralization of the web and freedom of creative expression. | Continue reading
Polish translation is available: Dlaczego musimy sprzeciwić się nowej dyrektywie o prawie autorskim A committee of members of the European Parliament have voted to approve Article 11 and Article 13, which pose a risk to the decentralization of the web and freedom of creative expr … | Continue reading
I follow many talented artists on Mastodon, and over my 2 years of being on the platform I have noticed some common patterns that may help a newcomer find their audience on here, too. | Continue reading
I follow many talented artists on Mastodon, and over my 2 years of being on the platform I have noticed some common patterns that may help a newcomer find their audience on here, too. | Continue reading
Today we’ll be looking at how to connect the protocols powering Mastodon in the simplest way possible to enter the federated network. We will use static files, standard command-line tools, and some simple Ruby scripting, although the functionality should be easily adaptable to ot … | Continue reading
A fresh new release of the federated social network software is here, and while the primary focus of it has been on fixing bugs and improving performance, it brings a couple of notable new features to the board.Delete & Redraft There are legitimate reasons why social media platfo … | Continue reading
Today we’ll be looking at how to connect the protocols powering Mastodon in the simplest way possible to enter the federated network. We will use static files, standard command-line tools, and some simple Ruby scripting, although the functionality should be easily adaptable to ot … | Continue reading
A fresh new release of the federated social network software is here, and while the primary focus of it has been on fixing bugs and improving performance, it brings a couple of notable new features to the board.Delete & Redraft There are legitimate reasons why social media platfo … | Continue reading
Deep down you always knew it. On the edge of your perception, you always heard the people who talked about the erosion of privacy, that there was no such thing as free cheese, that if you don’t pay — then you’re the product. Now you know that it’s true. Cambridge Analytica has su … | Continue reading
The development of the next version of Mastodon coincided with the reveal of Vero, yet another commercial social network silo backed by millionaires with a shady past. Vero has struck a chord, at least until people caught on to its background, and it wasn’t just because of its un … | Continue reading
This article assumes you’ve read my previous two blog posts, here and here. Why not give them a quick read if you haven’t already?To balance out the doom and gloom of an internet wholly under the thrall of corporate interests and fed through single channels devoid of competition, … | Continue reading
Isn’t it a bit strange that the entire world has to wait on the CEO of Twitter to come around on what constitutes healthy discourse? I am not talking about it being too little, too late. Rather, my issue is with “instant, public, global messaging and conversation” being entirely … | Continue reading
The online space is dominated by a small handful of companies that command a disproportionate amount of power and influence over the entire online experience, not just social media. So much influence that several of these companies have fundamentally altered many aspects of life … | Continue reading
So you want to be part of the Mastodon network, and you want to truly own your data, independent of anyone else. Perhaps you want to curate a niche community for a specific interest, or maybe for your own family or close circle of friends. You went through the documentation and i … | Continue reading
Human beings, above all else, are storytellers. It’s how we relate to our own past, or personalities, or each other. It’s how to connect with the world around us, make sense of events, and assess values. We rely on stories to function as agents in the world. These stories are oft … | Continue reading
About 6 months have passed since April, during which the major mainstream breakthrough of our decentralized social network took place. From 20,000 users to almost a million! What better time to run through a couple examples of what’s been introduced since then?Mastodon is defined … | Continue reading
Mastodon is a free, open-source federated social network spanning over 800,000 users spread across more than 2,000 servers.Mastodon v1.6 is here, and it is the first Mastodon release which fully implements the ActivityPub protocol. ActivityPub is a new federated messaging protoco … | Continue reading
My name is Eugen Rochko and I’m the creator of Mastodon, a free, open-source federated social network with over 760,000 users. You can check it out here. The Mastodon project is finally well-represented visually. I always felt like the previous logo did not do it justice. To its … | Continue reading