Admin@Admin@mastodon.designmastodon.design

That’s it for this announcement!
Thank you for your attention, and see you next month.

Until then, enjoy the Rainwater.
March 1–5: Grass sprouts, trees bud

— Timothée

Mastodon published their technical post for January 2025 https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/02/trunk-tidbits-january-2025/ and another update about their approach to the long-requested quote posts feature https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/02/bringing-quote-posts-to-mastodon/; A podcast by The Conversation about how decentralised social media platforms work, interviewing Robert Gehl https://theconversation.com/decentralised-social-media-offers-an-alternative-to-big-tech-platforms-like-x-and-meta-how-does-it-work-podcast-249758; Identity Graph Explorer is a simple tool to find out how “identifiers on the Fediverse / Social Web are connected to one another” https://glider.mythik.co.uk

10/11

@kissane also wrote an very good blog post about “bridging” (connecting separate networks), fediverse culture, and why this regularly leads to drama and blowups https://www.wrecka.ge/bridges-scruples/; @iftas announces they’ll run out of funding soon, indicating the challenges with funding Trust & Safety in the network https://about.iftas.org/2025/02/06/funding-challenges-and-the-future-of-our-work/

9/11

During FOSDEM in Brussels, Mastodon presented the progress on their Fediverse Discovery Provider project https://ftp.fau.de/fosdem/2025/ud2208/fosdem-2025-4531-fediscovery-improving-search-and-discovery-on-the-fediverse.av1.webm; ActivityPods presented its framework which combines ActivityPub with Solid Pods https://activitypods.org; @_elena shared a new article on its blog untitled “Supporting the Fediverse, one small act at a time” https://blog.elenarossini.com/supporting-the-fediverse-one-small-act-at-a-time/

8/11

Tumblr has reconfirmed that it is working on connecting to the fediverse https://wip.tumblr.com/post/773574776721702912/about-a-year-ago-wordpress-ceo-matt-mullenweg; Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy https://www.404media.co/decentralized-social-media-is-the-only-alternative-to-the-tech-oligarchy/; @mapache shared the 8th part of its Guide to Implementing ActivityPub in a Static Site (or Any Website) https://maho.dev/2025/01/a-guide-to-implementing-activitypub-in-a-static-site-or-any-website-part-8/

7/11

As always, let’s conclude with a curation of the best recent Fediverse news: Pixelfed has seen massive growth over the last month and now has more that 230K monthly users; its main developer Dansup launch a Kickstarter to support the development of Pixelfed, Loops and some other projects, and it has raised almost 84K€ so far, so check out the campaign if you want to support it and see the preview of the new Pixelfed web UI designed by our member @matlfb https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixelfed/pixelfed-foundation-2024-real-ethical-social-networks

6/11

For our French-speaking members, the video of my talk at Ethics by Design back in November, organized by @designersethiques, has been published on their PeerTube instance: https://peertube.designersethiques.org/w/eTiQK154EKLNJquGWYwKYn.

It’s a 40-minute presentation titled “Administrating mastodon.design: feedback and ideas for a sustainable Fediverse”. For those of you who don’t speak French, at least you can put a face on me and @mcpaccard, and hear the sound of my voice when I’m stressed and thirsty.

5/11

Our server was updated to v4.3.3 in January and to v4.3.4 a few days ago. It mainly provide security and dependencies updates, and also various bug fixes. Here is the full changelog for those who are interested: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.3.4

As usual, we can thank @hugo for the smooth upgrades and his dedicated work over the years.

4/11

To help newcomers, I’ve updated the Help section of our About page: https://mastodon.design/about#help I’ve removed dead links and added a few new resources. Please don’t hesitate to make suggestions if you come across any useful content that could be added to this list.

Looking at our Masto.host stats, our disk space continues to grow slowly, but there’s nothing to worry about:

Database: 37.35 GB / 40 GB (93.38%)
Media: 151.61 GB / 400 GB (37.9%)

3/11

Let’s start with some good news to boost our morale: since January, our number of members has increased significantly!

Monthly active users: 339 (+39)
Total members: 1,221 (+51)

So welcome to all our new members; we hope you’ll enjoy your time here, free from the ads, surveillance capitalism, and fascist propaganda of Trump, Musk, and their bootlicking friends.

2/11

That’s it for this announcement!
Thank you for your attention, and see you next month.

Until then, enjoy the Lesser cold.
January 10–14: Springs thaw

— Timothée

Mastodon has belatedly published their Annual Report for 2023 https://joinmastodon.org/reports/Mastodon%20Annual%20Report%202023.pdf; Surf is a new app by Flipboard for the open social web that allows people to build their own custom feeds https://about.surf.social; TheIndieBeat.fm is a new radio station for showcasing indie music from the fediverse that will use upcoming fediverse audio platform Bandwagon.fm https://theindiebeat.fm

To conclude this already too long announcement, let’s end with our usual curation of the best recent Fediverse news: A New Social is a new non-profit organization focused on building cross-protocol tools and services for the open social web https://www.anew.social; PeerTube v7 has officially been released, and the update brings a major redesign https://framablog.org/2024/12/17/peertube-v7-offer-a-complete-makeover-to-your-video-platform/; BLDV’s Mammoth iOS app, sub.club and moth.social servers shut down due to a lack of funding

I also took the time to add a section about third-party apps for newcomers: https://mastodon.design/about#third-party-apps

If you’d like to try out a new Mastodon desktop or mobile client, I’ve put together a small selection for you, so don’t hesitate to take a look—I personally use @moshidon on my Android phone.

Mastodon.design is now definitely part of the #Fedipact – the instances blocking Zuckerberg’s Threads.net: https://fedipact.veganism.social/?v2

If some of you are upset by this decision, I invite you to do your own research and read this page https://freefediverse.org/index.php/Nightmares. Then if you still think that it is unjustified, the good news is that you can simply move to another server.

To inform everyone of this decision, I updated our About page to make our list of Moderated servers public: https://mastodon.design/about

Back in 2023, I asked you what should be our position about Threads, and the “Wait and see” position is the one that received the most votes: https://observablehq.com/@timotheegoguely/2023-mastodon-design-survey#cell-1033.

I also wrote “If it turns out that some of their practices, particularly in terms of moderation, negatively affect certain people and the Fediverse in general, we reserve the right to limit or suspend their server in the future.”

We’ve waited, we observed, and now the time has come: Meta has gone way beyond the limits.

Speaking of trust and security makes a perfect transition into why we decided to suspend and defederate from Threads.

This decision is in response to Meta’s recent announcements on the large-scale removal of content moderation rules and third-party fact-checking tools, which deeply affect the safety of LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized communities and contribute to spreading misinformation on a global scale.

With this small profit of 96€, I donated 16€ back to Mastodon and 12€ to IFTAS, and I’ve set aside the rest for 2025.

I’m proud to say that, thanks to you, our finances were balanced in 2024 and we contributed to the development of Mastodon and a safer and more trustful Fediverse! Congratulations to us!