---
title: Mastodon
language: en
translationKey: projects-mastodon
disable_feed: true
date: 2021-09-02
layout: project
name: Mastodon
author: Gargron
authorURL: https://zeonfederated.com/
maintainers:
  - name: Mastodon gGmbH
    URL: https://joinmastodon.org/
projectURL: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
projectStatus: active
categories: ["software", "social network"]
tags: ["social network", "federation", "fediverse"]
---

*Mastodon* is a [federated][fedi] social network, with a Twitter-like
<abbr title="user interface">UI</abbr>.

[fedi]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

## Features

- Content feeds: **home** (posts from accounts you follow), **local** (public
  posts from accounts on the same instance), and **federated** (public posts
  from connected servers)
- Character limit: 500, which is much longer than Twitter 
  <abbr title="for what it's worth">fwiw</abbr>
- Customizable web UI
- Various available clients on all platforms
- Instance custom emojis
- Moderation
  - Instance admins are capable of blocking contents from other servers on
      different levels
  - Normal members are capable of mute and block other users or instances, and
      filter words
- Accounts can be exported and migrated to another server (posts are not
    migrated, however)

## Forks

Mastodon has a few forks, the most two popular ones are [Mastodon Glitch
Edition][gs] and [hometown][ht], which provides some extra features.

[gs]: https://github.com/glitch-soc/mastodon
[ht]: https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/

## Personal opinions

Overall, Mastodon gives a nice and intuitive user interface.  It also provides
quite flexible tools for moderating your timeline.  However, this can be abused
by some instance admins who would block other instances without specific
reason, which pretty much defeats the purpose of federation.

Mastodon doesn't support markups (the [glitch-soc][gs] fork does,
<abbr title="as far as I know">afaik</abbr>).  This can be limiting if you like
embedding links into the text.  For this reason, I prefer
[Pleroma][pleroma].

## See also

- Guides:
  - [Kev's guide][kevq]
  - [joyeusenoelle's guide](https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon)
  - [Göktuǧ's tips on federated social networks][cadadr]
- Mastodon instance lists:
  - [joinmastodon.org endorsed list][mastodon.org]
  - [instances.noct.zone](https://instances.noct.zone/)
- Other microblogging social networks:
  - [Pleroma][pleroma]
  - [Misskey][misskey]

[kevq]: https://kevq.uk/how-does-mastodon-work/
[mastodon.org]: https://joinmastodon.org/communities
[cadadr]: https://toot.cat/@cadadr/106561338340521311
[pleroma]: /projects/pleroma/
[misskey]: /projects/misskey/