Mastodon (software)
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| Developer(s) | Eugen Rochko |
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| Initial release | 5 October 2016 |
| Repository | github |
| Development status | Active |
| Written in | Ruby, JavaScript |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Available in | English, German, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Esperanto, Dutch, Japanese |
| Type | Microblogging |
| License | Affero General Public License |
| Website | mastodon |
Mastodon is a federated social network, with similar features to Twitter, but administrated as a decentralized federation of servers running open source software. Users belong to a single Mastodon server, known as an "instance", where they post short messages for others to read, subject to the privacy settings of the user and instance. Messages can range from private to the user, private to the user's followers, public on a specific instance, public across the federated Mastodon network, and directly between users. The service seeks to distinguish itself from Twitter through its orientation towards small communities and community-based, rather than top-down, moderation.
The Mastodon mascot is a sitting Proboscidean using a tablet or smartphone; however, the distribution of fur is more suggestive of a woolly mammoth than the mastodon.
Mastodon approximates the user experience of Twitter and uses an interface similar to TweetDeck, a professional Twitter application. On both services, users post short status messages for others to read. These messages can include up to 500 text characters, an extension of Twitter's 140-character limit, and are known as "toots", "noots", "awoos" or other terms instead of "tweets", as on Twitter.
Users join a specific Mastodon server, known as an "instance", rather than a single flagship website or application. The instances are connected as nodes in a network, and each server can administrate its own rules, account privileges, and whether to share messages to and from other instances. The flagship instance, Mastodon.social, had about 42,000 users as of early April 2017. Other instances are based on communal interests, such as Internet memes, Minecraft, or technology.The global use is rising fast, having about 290,000 users as of April 16, 2017.
The service includes a number of privacy features. Each message has a privacy option, and users can choose whether the post is public or private. Public messages display on a global feed, known as a timeline, and private messages are only shared on the timelines of the user's followers. Messages can also be marked as unlisted from timelines or direct between users. Users can also mark their accounts as completely private. In the timeline, messages can display with an optional "content warning" feature, which requires readers to click on the content to reveal the rest of the message. Mastodon instances have used this feature to hide spoilers, trigger warnings, and not safe for work (NSFW) content, though some accounts use the feature to hide links and thoughts others might not want to read.
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