Mastodon and the Fediverse matter to me because they present a truly viable alternative to this model, by showing its users no advertisement, respecting users’ privacy, focussing on keeping users safe, and allowing them to connect to the Fediverse and beyond rather than putting them into a digital prison to extract as much metadata about them to please advertisers.
(3/13)

My vision for Mastodon is a different direction than all previous attempts at social media, by focussing on community ownership, Trust & Safety features, slow user & server growth, and financial sustainability - for the non-profit project, the server administrators, the moderators, and creators in the Fediverse. I’m thrilled to have @haubles as Community Director and @renchap as Technical Director on my side in making this vision a reality.
(4/13)

My personal heroes and projects I admire are @signalapp @Mer__edith @torproject @gnome @thunderbird @ryanleesipes . I’d much rather have Mastodon be inspired by the contributions of these people and projects to the FOSS and non-profit technology world than trying to rebuild early Twitter.
(5/13)

I have huge respect for everyone contributing to the Fediverse: the larger-than-life architects like @cwebber @evan (without whom we would literally all not be here), implementers like @dansup bringing photo & video to it, new projects like @newsmast @michael @FreddieJ @saskia @bonfire @ivan @mayel orgs like @Flipboard @mike @john @ghost @activitypub.blog @pfefferle bringing the media over to the Fediverse, and @rileytestut @altstore for trying out completely new things.
(6/13)

Many of us would also not be here if it weren’t for patient and forward thinking people in media and civil society like @Sarahp @laurenshof @leonido @janboehm @markus_netzpolitik @samvie @Sascha @melaniebartos
(7/13)

Thanks to amazing people like
@jaz @iftas @swf @mallory @bjoernsta @j12t we can see through topics larger than us related to policy, regulation, protocol development as well as how to deal with spam attacks, how to design a safer product for everyone, and how to deal with occasional interpersonal conflicts in our beautiful part of the internet.
(8/13)

I want to send my heartfelt thanks @karienbez @alshafei for their wisdom and emotional support during this crazy journey so far, to @codinghorror @biz for your visionary strategic & financial support without which this restructuring would not have been possible, and to the team of Paul Hastings for your pro-bono legal advice.
(9/13)

Thanks @Gargron for allowing us to do this the pure non-profit and FOSS way by saying no to earlier offers, some of which would have given you more than 10x the payout. I have been inspired by your vision about this project from the moment I met you 5+ years ago. It takes a lot of courage and greatness to let this project go. Super excited for continuing to work with you!
(10/13)

But Mastodon wouldn’t be where it is without so many more people than Eugen. I’m incredibly grateful to be able to work with the best team we’ve ever had. Each one of you brings so much value to the Mastodon project and I want to thank you for making our mission your day job while you could certainly earn double or triple at one of our for-profit competitors.
(11/13)

We’re still an absolute skeleton crew of 14 people, competing with teams sometimes 100x as large as ours. To get to our humble team size was only possible through the less than 1% community members who donate to Mastodon, a handful larger donations, & EU grants, all of which we are forever grateful for. We still have a large funding need for 2026, so please consider making a donation before the year-end if you’d like us to continue building and improving Mastodon joinmastodon.org/sponsors#dona…
(12/13)