Free, open-source decentralized social media platform.
Mastodon is a non-profit that develops the Mastodon software. Mastodon started in 2016 as an open-source project by Eugen Rochko, who, as an avid user since 2008, was dissatisfied with the state and direction of Twitter.
Believing that instant global communications were too crucial for modern society to belong to a single commercial company, he sought to build a user-friendly microblogging product that would not belong to any central authority, but remain practical for everyday use.
The project was officially incorporated as a gGmbH (a German form of non-profit LLC) in 2021. In 2025, the team began the process of moving the project to a new foundation and began implementing community governance.
