Mastodon icon
Mastodon icon

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.

Screenshot of the Mastodon web interface

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Application types

Platforms

  • Online
  • Android
  • iPhone
  • iPad
  • Self-Hosted
  • F-Droid
  • Cloudron
4.2 / 5 Avg rating (70)
508 likes
46comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Privacy focused
  2.  Lightweight
  3.  Support for Themes

Features

  1.  Decentralized
  2.  Federated
  3.  Ad-free
  4.  Fediverse
  5. ActivityPub icon  Support for ActivityPub
  6.  Dark Mode
  7.  No Censorship
  8.  Two-factor Authentication
  9.  No Tracking
  10.  Support for @mentions
  11.  Multiple Account support
  12.  Self Destructing Messages
  13.  Support for MarkDown

Mastodon News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

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Recent activities

  • CypherJack liked Mastodon
    1 day ago
  • CSlayer95 rated Mastodon  
    3 days ago
  • CSlayer95 and brinerustle liked Mastodon
    3 days ago
  • App icon
    GorillaMan added Mastodon as alternative to Cheddify
    27 days ago
  • ekroberts73 and Jqri liked Mastodon
    30 days ago
  • ourari reviewed Mastodon  
    about 1 month ago

    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.

  • ourari liked Mastodon
    about 1 month ago
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Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Comment summary: Mastodon is praised for its decentralized, ad-free, and federated nature, allowing users to join or host independent communities with diverse moderation. Users appreciate the absence of ads and algorithms, and the platform's focus on privacy and user-friendly interface. However, criticisms include confusing multiple instance systems, potential political biases in moderation, and challenges with user privacy. Despite some negative feedback, many users consider Mastodon a strong alternative to Twitter.
Sarah H
  
Top positive commentApr 2, 2019

I like that it's a decentralized and federated social media platform that encourages communication across posting formats.

8
Alex Ruiz
  
Top negative commentJun 27, 2020

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

2 replies
Johxz

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

If this reply contains spam or other abuse, notify admins about it.
Poyque estamos

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

If this reply contains spam or other abuse, notify admins about it.
12
ourari
  
Positive commentJan 17, 2025

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.

1
Korbs
  
Positive commentJan 14, 2025

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.

0
Guest
  
Negative commentDec 18, 2024

It was GFWed on China.

-2
testman2023
  
Negative commentNov 25, 2024

Unfortunately censorship was applied to me in the past, as other users already commented, for political/ideology reasons and then I left.

-1
Goldmaster
  
Positive commentAug 15, 2024

this is the only true alternative to twitter and has been around longest. Decentralised, 3rd party support as well.

-2
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7 of 46 comments

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a Free and Open Source federated social network, made with a focus on more personal interaction.

The biggest difference between Mastodon and many other social networks is that even though a Mastodon website (called an instance) can operate alone, they can interoperate through AcitivityPub, letting their users on different, independent, instances communicate with each other. This is called federation, and it even works with instances running different software like PeerTube icon PeerTube and Pixelfed icon Pixelfed

FEATURES

  • No ads or tracking
  • No algorithm
  • Completely Free and Open Source
  • 500 character text limit
  • Custom emojis
  • Content warnings/spoilers
  • Easy post editing
  • Many moderation tools like text filtering
  • Image thumbnail adjustment
  • Fully self-hostable

Mastodon Videos

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Official Links

Mastodon information

  • Developed by

    Mastodon gGmbH
  • Licensing

    Open Source (AGPL-3.0) and Free product.
  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.2 (70 ratings)
  • Alternatives

    128 alternatives listed
  • News

    12 news article related to Mastodon
  • Supported Languages

    • English
    • Arabic
    • Basque
    • Catalan; Valencian
    • Dutch
    • French
    • Scottish Gaelic; Gaelic
    • Galician
    • German
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Kurdish
    • Russian
    • Chinese
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    • Thai
    • Turkish
    • Vietnamese

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GitHub repository

  •  47,729 Stars
  •  7,090 Forks
  •  4045 Open Issues
  •   Updated Feb 14, 2025 
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Our users have written 46 comments and reviews about Mastodon, and it has gotten 508 likes

Mastodon was added to AlternativeTo by David on Oct 11, 2016 and this page was last updated Nov 7, 2024.