Mastodon

Mastodon works differently from the social networks you know. Instead of one company running everything, thousands of independent servers talk to each other through an open protocol called ActivityPub. You pick a server, create an account, and follow people on any other server in the network. Think of it like email: your Gmail account can message someone on Outlook. Same idea.

A German nonprofit (Mastodon gGmbH, Berlin) builds the software but does not control the network. Each server sets its own rules and moderation policies. Posts show up in chronological order. No algorithm decides what you see. No ads interrupt your timeline. Your data is not sold to advertisers.

Over 10 million accounts are registered across roughly 10,500 servers. The European Commission and the European Data Protection Supervisor both run their own Mastodon instances. Posts can be up to 500 characters and support images, video, polls, and content warnings.

Worth knowing

There is a learning curve. Choosing a server feels confusing at first, and the audience is smaller than mainstream platforms (around 800,000 to 1 million monthly active users). Direct messages are not end-to-end encrypted, so server admins can technically read them. Privacy protections depend on which server you join. Pick an EU-based server if GDPR compliance matters to you.