What is mastodon? mastodon is an open source social network. Similar to Twitter or Tumblr, users can make profiles, post messages, images or videos, and of course follow other users. Messages follow a 500 character limit and are displayed in a chronological order. Unlike other platforms, however, mastodon is decentralized, meaning that there is no one server, company or person running it. While other social media platforms are owned and operated by a single corporation who has full control over everything, anyone can create and run their own server of mastodon. How does this work? When someone creates their own version of mastodon, this is called an instance. Since mastodon is open source, anyone can create their own instance of mastodon with their own set of rules. Because of this, all instances are owned, operated and moderated by the community that creates them, and not some large corporation which tracks their data to sell to advertisers. In most cases, mastodon instances are crowdfunded, not financed. But how do these instances communicate with one another? While users within an instance can, of course, follow each other, they can also decide to follow users within other instances. So while each instance of mastodon is privately operated, their users can still communicate with members from other servers seamlessly. Of course, communities who want to remain private don't have to communicate with other servers. This is in the hands of its users. mastodon also offers effective anti-abuse tools to help moderate instances as users see fit. Ultimately, mastodon is a social network which puts the user first. Unlike traditional social media, mastodon can't go bankrupt. It can't be sold and it can't be completely blocked by governments. Users are free to join whichever community they want and communicate with whomever they want. With over a million registered users across multiple different languages, mastodon is growing fast. Not sure which instance to join? Click the link below to find one that's right for you.