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.
As a refresher, Mastodon implements the so-called ActivityPub protocol to enable Mastodon servers to talk to each other; that’s ...
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 creativ...
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.
Introduce yourself
A lot of the toots that get shared around widely are artists’ introducti...
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 ...
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 me...
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 h...
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 i...
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 compet...
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 enti...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ar...
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 d...
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 p...
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...
This is an update for my Patreon supporters. It is posted on Medium because of its superiour formatting capabilities.
So, April, huh. A lot happened. I was putting off writing an update on here because I knew I had to go into detail on all the things that happened, and that’...
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 effe...
My name is Eugen Rochko and I’m the creator of Mastodon, a free, open-source federated social network server. The flagship instance mastodon.social has over 23,000 users and is growing fast. You can check it out here.
If your organization is hosting a Mastodon instance, it i...
My name is Eugen Rochko and I’m the creator of Mastodon, a free, open-source federated social network server. The flagship instance mastodon.social has over 22,000 users and is growing fast. You can check it out here.
Very early on in the development of Mastodon I’ve decided...
Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto might be well-spirited, but one thing in it is fundamentally wrong:
In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all o...
