Updates from the Mastodon team
Mastodon 3.0
In this exciting new release: Moving accounts, trending hashtags, private servers and more!
Eleanor
Guest
Gab switches to Mastodon's code
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 client-side API would allow any existing Mastodon app to be used to access Gab. We have never had any sympathy for their thinly (if at all) veiled white supremacist platform so that was not a welcome move on our part, however the license that we publish our software under (AGPLv3) allows anyone to use it as they see fit as long as they keep the same license and make their modifications public.
Eugen Rochko
CEO / Founder
Mastodon 2.9
The latest release of Mastodon introduces a simplified single-column interface as the new default for new users
Eleanor
Guest
How to migrate from one server to another
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 thing you will want to do is to get a backup of all of your data. Thankfully this process is painless with the Data Export tab under the “Import and Export” page.
Eleanor
Guest
Introducing the Mastodon Server Covenant
To provide a safer experience to new Mastodon users, we are changing the joinmastodon.org server picker
Eugen Rochko
CEO / Founder
Improving support for adult content on Mastodon
Using the Blurhash algorithm in Mastodon 2.8.1 to generate prettier previews for sensitive media
Eugen Rochko
CEO / Founder
Mastodon 2.8
In this release: Polls, new tools for managing followers, new frontpage design, new admin features, Keybase integration, and more
Eugen Rochko
CEO / Founder
Mastodon now available on DigitalOcean
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 necessary information for the prompt is a domain name (it should already be pointing at the IP address of your droplet!) and credentials to some e-mail delivery service, like SparkPost, Mailgun, Sendgrid, or something similar.
Eugen Rochko
CEO / Founder
The role of mastodon.social in the Mastodon ecosystem
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 decentralized. That means there is no “main” server. If mastodon.social actually disappeared from the face of the Earth, it would not bring down the Mastodon network at all.
Eugen Rochko
CEO / Founder