Welcome back, friends: and, happy 2026. Our team is anticipating a lot of exciting developments this year As we write this update in early January, FOSDEM is just a few weeks away. We will have a stand at the event for the third year in a row, where you’ll be able to talk to folks from the team. If...

   We are happy to release our 2024 Annual Report. We’re a non-profit, and open-source; we value transparency, and we are committed to informing our users and supporters about how we operate. Our 2024 was transformative in ways we didn’t anticipate, and we wanted to capture the full story before...

   Elon Musk’s X platform has blocked the European Commission from making advertisements, presumably in response to the 120 million fine for its misleading verification system and overall lack of transparency. We’re grateful to Elon Musk for proving once again why the world needs to log off corporate...

   Hello, friends Last month was momentous and exciting: we announced a new organisation structure; Eugen changed roles; and, we also announced a new path for donors to support us in Europe, thanks to fiscal sponsorship from WE AID. Alongside these changes, we’ve also started a series of social posts...

   We are happy to announce fiscal sponsorship via WE AID, a German nonprofit organisation that supports charitable projects within an established legal framework. This move is part of Mastodon’s transformation. This partnership offers donors tax-deductible contributions in Germany and ensures...

   Earlier this year, we announced that Mastodon would be transitioning its legal and operational structures to better reflect our mission. Today, we’re marking another momentous step in this ongoing process as our Founder and now former CEO Eugen Rochko begins his transition into a new role with...

   After nearly 10 years, I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon and transferring my ownership of the trademark and other assets to the Mastodon non-profit. Over the course of my time at Mastodon, I have centered myself less and less in our outward communications, and to some degree, this is the...

   We started the Trunk & Tidbits series to provide greater visibility into what we’re building, and the decisions that go into making Mastodon. At the start of October, we published our ideas on an upcoming feature - that we’re temporarily describing as Packs , or collections or lists of people...

   Mastodon 4.5 has arrived, with enhanced conversations across communities, expanded moderator tools, and new ways for admins to showcase their server communities. Read on for more details. As always, if you use mastodon.social, you may already have seen some of the updates as they gradually showed...

   Update October 31: Added a missing section about new timeline settings. Mastodon 4.5 is almost ready. We just released the first (and hopefully only) release candidate, and the final release should be coming along very soon. This is once again a good time to highlight some of the new features and...

   Last year, we launched our first batch of plushies, and our community has embraced the #Plushtodon literally and figuratively. It sold out in Europe within a few weeks. Sadly, that means a lot of you missed out on the chance to get one. We’ve listened to your feedback and decided to bring the...

   Hello September was an exciting month, as we started to enable the ability to create Quote Posts on mastodon.social and mastodon.online (and, they also started to show up on other servers that run nightly builds of Mastodon). Coming to stable releases, very soon now Releases In September, we made...

   Background Mastodon’s timeline doesn’t rely on dopamine-driven algorithms - it is chronological and consent-based, showing only posts from accounts you (the person using Mastodon) have followed. This focus on privacy and conscious consumption is what leads many people to join the Fediverse in the...

   In a recent post, we shared that one of our priorities for 2025 is to establish a more sustainable financial base for the Mastodon organisation. In 2024, Mastodon gGmbH took over hosting of the European Commission’s Mastodon service. We also signed a support contract with the state of Schleswig...

   Over the years, we’ve learned just how essential quoting is to many of you. When done responsibly, quoting allows us to expand discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices. Quoting is a powerful tool, and like any tool, it can be misused. That’s why we’ve taken time to...

   Welcome to the 17th edition of Trunk & Tidbits: your monthly update from inside the Mastodon core engineering team. Let’s get into what we were working on in August 2025. It has been summertime in the northern hemisphere, and various team members have been taking time away. As a result, things...

   It’s time for another recap of project progress, particularly from the engineering side of the team. Welcome News In July, we announced that we’d be running a donation campaign in our mobile apps, visible to people on the mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers. This is an exploratory step, as...

   For too long, the internet has been shaped by platforms funded by venture capital and advertising. The Fediverse is testament to a different kind of social media: one built for its users, not corporate interests. This independence is what makes Mastodon and the wider Fediverse special, fostering a...

   It was another busy month in June, as we moved into the final stretch of the 4.4 release process. We also covered a lot of events during the month. Here’s what was happening. Team We welcomed Imani to the team, as our new designer. Very excited to have Imani join us We also said goodbye to Inga,...

   Mastodon 4.4 is here, bringing you new ways to showcase yourself, manage your growing network, and enjoy what’s in your timeline. Administrators and moderators also gain new tools for keeping communities safe. As always, if you use mastodon.social, you may already have seen some of the updates as...

   Mastodon 4.4 is just around the corner: the release candidate is now available, and the final release should be coming along very soon. Just before the final version arrives, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of the new features and changes that will be particularly important to anyone...

   This week is UN Open Source Week, and we’re happy to share that today, Mastodon was added to the Digital Public Goods Alliance’s DPG Registry. A goal of the DPGA is to promote digital public goods in order to create a more equitable world. Being recognised as a DPG increases the visibility, support...

   We’re already well into 2025, and it has been a huge start to the year for Mastodon. We want to bring you an overdue update on exactly what we’re working on, from a strategic perspective. Mastodon’s mission is to ensure that our online social spaces belong to the people forever, and provide a safe...

   Hello again Thank you for reading our monthly engineering team update, we’re happy to share what we’ve been working on. Events We had a busy May, with several events that we participated in, or organized. The biggest one was re:publica in Berlin, where several members of the Mastodon team were able...

   Mastodon’s core purpose is to connect you with your friends and communities, to have conversations that matter to you. Communities need some ground rules; and, on the internet, we also need to be aware of any regulations that are relevant where our services are being operated. In the upcoming...

   This edition of Trunk & Tidbits marks the one year anniversary of our monthly development updates Back at the beginning of 2024, we discussed how regular communication needed to be a part of our team’s culture, as a commitment to the people who help to make Mastodon what it is - everyone that...

   As Mastodon continues to evolve and grow, we’re excited to announce several changes to our team (and also, to offer a brief update on our restructuring). Restructuring Progress We’re currently forming a new foundation in Europe as a new home for the project and its assets. The terms papers have...

   Greetings We’re back, with our monthly update from the Mastodon engineering team. Remember how last month was a bit lighter for news? Well, this time, we are making up for it and have a lot to share Take a look below for team updates, some significant new features, and updates to the mobile apps....

   Hello again. Thanks for checking out our latest engineering updates. We hope that our monthly updates help you follow what we’ve been working on, and where we’re headed. This is a slightly lighter entry in the series, although there was plenty happening. At the start of the month we were recovering...

   Quote Posts are a popular feature of many social media platforms. They offer the ability to share another person’s post to one’s own followers, while adding a comment. We want to share our thinking process in implementing Quote Posts in Mastodon, and explain why it has taken us some time to do so....

   Welcome back to our technical blog series: Trunk & Tidbits. This is where we share updates on what the development team has been working on, and what we have planned for the future. This month we have a lot to tell you about, including a brief recap of our time at FOSDEM (which technically...

   For any enquiry regarding this announcement, please contact press joinmastodon.org Mastodon was founded on the principles that people should be able to control their social circle online, curate their own timeline, and convene freely with any community of their choosing. We believe social media...

   A belated happy 2025 wish, from the Mastodon team (although, if you’ve been paying attention, there has been some important news already this month). We’re a little later than planned in posting a summary of the work that happened during December, but let’s get into it. Last month was a bit more...

   If you’re curious how Mastodon is doing by the numbers, the 2023 Annual Report is finally here. A bit late in the year, perhaps, but we’ve got a lot more numbers to share this time Mastodon is a non-profit, and open-source, so we revel in the transparency. How large is our budget, and where does it...

   Hi everyone We’re back with our monthly engineering update, looking back at a busy November. General news We were pleased to see our friends at NGI (Next Generation Internet) announce a major transition to using Mastodon and PeerTube as primary communication channels for many of their projects. Our...

   Welcome back to our monthly engineering series. In October, our long-anticipated plushies got out into the wild (mostly in Europe, for now), and we were busy tuning the code and planning what’s next. This is also a larger entry in our blog series, for updates from around our community. New arrivals...

   Hello, friends It’s time for another installment of our engineering updates series. Here’s what’s been happening in the code this past month. Releases Mastodon 4.3 is here After 12 months of hard work, several beta versions, and a release candidate for testing, we’re excited to share version 4.3...

   Mastodon 4.3 just landed If you’re a mastodon.social user, you might have already seen some of this in action as we’ve been gradually rolling out these updates over the course of the last 11 months in nightly releases, but we’re finally making a new stable release available to the community. If you...

   It was a big month for the Mastodon team, with a lot of work going into getting the first beta release of version 4.3 ready - but that’s not all that we’ve worked on. Here is our monthly update on what we’ve been up to. Releases During August, we released versions 4.2.12 (as well as a short-lived 4...

   Hey, friends - here is another instalment in our engineering updates series. This is what has been happening in the code lately. Team Updates At the very end of July we opened a role for an iOS developer to look after the official Mastodon for iOS app. If you are interested, the details of the role...

   The European Union must keep funding free software The Next Generation Internet (NGI) program from the European Commission has been crucial for the development of many open-source products, including Mastodon. They are one of the best initiatives worldwide to finance work on OSS projects. The...

   Looking back at June (and just sneaking in to the start of July), we have a lot to share with you. Let’s dive in Growing the team First of all, we are delighted to announce a new member of the core development team - David Roetzel joined us as a core web developer. Welcome, dave Keeping things...

   To reinforce and encourage Mastodon as the go-to place for journalism, we’re launching a new feature today. You will notice that underneath some links shared on Mastodon, the author byline can be clicked to open the author’s associated fediverse account, right in the app. This highlights writers...

   Welcome again to Trunk & Tidbits, our engineering updates blog series. Let us fill you in on what we’ve been focused on during this past month. Releases you should know about During May, we released some important updates for the 4.2 and 4.1 releases, and nightly builds. They contain minor...

   Welcome to the first in a planned ongoing series of updates from the core Mastodon engineering team. We’ll also take a quick look at what’s been happening around the broader community. What we’ve been working on The Mastodon 4.3 release is around the corner - we only have one big feature (grouped...

   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. We’re excited to...

   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 what a character like...

   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 company roll-up, buy our...

   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 besides the point these...

   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 can only afford a...