Mastodon
508 likes
Decentralized and federated social platform with no ads, focusing on personal interaction, and offering 500 character posts, custom emojis, content warnings, and robust moderation tools.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- iPad
- Self-Hosted
- F-Droid
- Cloudron
Features
Mastodon News & Activities
Highlights • All activities
Recent News
- POX published news article about MastodonMastodon is finally planning to add quote posts with user controls and safety features
The Mastodon team has announced plans to introduce quote posts, a highly requested feature, to thei...
- Maoholguin published news article about MastodonMastodon announces a shift of platform control to a new European nonprofit entity
Mastodon is transferring its key assets, including its name and copyrights, to a new nonprofit orga...
- Maoholguin published news article about MastodonMastodon 4.3 has launched with new content recommendations and grouped notifications
Mastodon has launched version 4.3, introducing a recommendations carousel on the home feed, which h...
Recent activities
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon Videos
Mastodon information
AlternativeTo Categories
Social & Communications, Security & Privacy, DevelopmentApple AppStore
- Updated Dec 2, 2024
- 4.56 avg rating
GitHub repository
- 47,729 Stars
- 7,090 Forks
- 4045 Open Issues
- Updated Feb 14, 2025
Comments and Reviews
I like that it's a decentralized and federated social media platform that encourages communication across posting formats.
I love how most reviews are about the mastodon.social instance and not really about the actual software! LOL
Overall, this application has the first mover advantage and is pretty robust, but there are better options. First off all, it's incredibly cumbersome, full of crazy dependencies, is a resource hog, and is a pain to update, especially compared to solutions like Pleroma, which is just as good, includes the Mastodon UI, and is a simple Elixir app that is so lightweight that it can run on a raspberry pi with no problems (and it can federate with mastodon instances anyway). Overall, unless you are planning on running this with a dedicated service provider like masto.host, it's probably going to be a pain for you as an admin to maintain a self-hosted service.
Admins can also see everything going on in their instance, including private messaging, which isn't exactly good for user privacy - something that folks come to twitter alternatives to get away from (but that issue exists with plermoa too).
Finally, not sure if this is still an issue, but last time I tried using this software, it basically has federation on by default with no way to actually create a private instance that can only be access by select few users and doesn't give them the power to pull in other instances into the feed without outright banning any and all instances being pulled in. This problem has already been solved by the Hometown fork of Mastodon, so I recommend that if you need to use mastodon privately.
As for the mastodon instances themselves, what else can I say that has not already been said? The more incendiary comments on this board speak for themselves. Most mastodon instances, including the mastodon.social one are incredibly toxic hugboxes full of objectionable content and terrible behavior that would get booted from mainstream social media with very good reason. Moderation isn't much better, every instance has their own king of the hill and they generally tend to encourage bad behavior by people they like and ban people/instances that don't conform to their ideals, basically the social media equivalent of high school cliques and drama, which isn't surprising. The only good instances are those dedicated to tech and if you aren't interested in tech, they will be of limited interest to you. The primary developer also encourages a lot of problematic behavior, including brigading, mass flagging, and harassing instance-owners and app developers who don't blacklist instances he doesn't like. You should avoid entirely and set up a private instance for friends and family if you are looking for a way to keep in touch and avoid the toxic elements of social media. Or just pick up the phone and call someone! :D
Thank you man! I think you sum everything up... I notice too cumbersome and resource hog, I don't know why people recommend mastodon for privacy, I had some issue with a admin reading my messages. Yes is true the main developer and other developers are toxic, and they're encouraging problematic behavior. The community super toxic too.
Reply written Feb 17, 2021
well i mean they did name it mastodon so it would have been a contradiction if it would have been lightweight like a little rat
Reply written Aug 18, 2022
It's free (as in freedom), open source, not-for-profit, billionaire-proof. You can self-host a server. It has the creative energy of the early internet.
Mastodon, as a software, is great as a decentralized option for social media in Fediverse alongside Misskey. The built-in user interface is fast and snappy for me and I like that I can change the theme, especially as a server admin that can apply custom CSS to the instance.
I usually like to do most things on my own server where I have control and freedom, getting my own Mastodon instance running was 'mostly' straight-forward with it's Docker method. The documentations were written pretty clear and I was able to follow along with no hiccups.
Happy to see functions like adding OIDC logins, which other softwares like Pixelfed should add.
The software is free, open source, and it's federated.
It was GFWed on China.
Unfortunately censorship was applied to me in the past, as other users already commented, for political/ideology reasons and then I left.
this is the only true alternative to twitter and has been around longest. Decentralised, 3rd party support as well.