Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Mastodon is a social networking and microblogging service. While similar to Twitter, it has many different aspects and features, many of which make it attractive to the furry community.

History

Mastodon and its flagship instance, mastodon.social, were first released on October 5, 2016, with a goal to create and foster an ad-free, community-maintained social media platform.

The key functional difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that Mastodon is a decentralized network of independently-maintained servers (called "Instances"), whereas Twitter's servers are all owned and operated by Twitter itself. Mastodon uses an open-source server platform which allows virtually anyone with sufficient server space and connectivity to join its network. This allows for servers to have domain names that attract various communities, including furry communities.

On December 1, 2017, the total number of user accounts across all instances reached one million. As of December 13, 2017, there were 1234 active instances, averaging 826 users per instance., and according to a blog post by co-creator Eugen Rochko, these have risen to 1,627,557 users on 3,460 instances by its second anniversary.

Following the purchase and immediate decline of Twitter in October 2022, interest in Mastodon grew significantly. Nearly 500,000 accounts and over 1100 instances were created among the various federated instances on Mastodon between October 27 and November 7, 2022.

Usage

How Instances work

Mastodon instances talk to and verify each other through a process called federation. This allows for users of different instances to view, follow, and communicate with each other, similar to e-mail. The overall network of federated instances, as well as instances of similar federated platforms using the same protocol, is colloquially called The Fediverse. The original protocol used to communicate across The Fediverse, OStatus, is also an open standard; however, Mastodon moved to ActivityPub in 2017, and removed support for OStatus in October 2019.

Each Mastodon instance has an administrator (or multiple administrators), who installs and maintains the Mastodon software suite, determines the name of their instance, and set other individual rules and server parameters for their instance. They may also create a distinct theme for their instance, including color schemes, graphics, language settings, and custom emoji. For privacy and safety concerns, administrators (as well as site moderators) have the right (and, as part of The Fediverse, often an obligation) to suspend or ban users on their instances who are violating the rules of the instance, The Fediverse, or the laws of their locality. Administrators also have the ability to blacklist other instances as a whole that are either out-of-date, poorly administered, have settings undesirable to their users, allow unhidden NSFW or offensive content, or harbor malicious users or spammers.

Users' account perspective

A prospective user can create a Mastodon account on almost any instance in the Fediverse; however, some instances are open for immediate use after creating an account, while others require that instance administrator's approval before their account is created. Once created, a user will log into their instance's account to post content using their federated username of @username@instance.name. Users can view and post content either from their instance's website or via one of several community-supported mobile apps.

A post to Mastodon is usually called a toot. Like Twitter, Mastodon allows users to toot text, image, audio, and video content, as well as use hashtags to allow for tagging of content for easier searching. Mastodon has a limit of 500 characters per toot, as opposed to 280 characters per tweet. Instance admins can choose to increase the character limit. Users can, by default, toot up to 8 megabytes of content per toot, but this is adjustable by an instance administrator. Furthermore, each individual toot can have separate privacy settings of public, unlisted (public but not listed on federated timelines), private (followers-only), and direct.

A major feature of Mastodon is that toots can also have hidden content. A built-in content warning mechanism is available on each toot, where the majority of a toot's content can be hidden behind warning text and a button that requires a viewer to click to read the rest. This is especially useful (and often encouraged) when a user toots content that is sensitive, lengthy, spoiler-ish, or NSFW. Pictures and video in a toot can also be marked as sensitive, regardless of whether they are behind a content warning, requiring the viewer to click on that media to view it.

Users can also "favorite" and "boost" toots, which are analogous to "like" and "retweet" on Twitter.

A user's profile has an avatar, header, small biographical field, and four free-form entries called "metadata". The latter are useful for stating one's pronouns, species, location, and other small information.

User interface

The website view of a Mastodon instance has a similar look and feel to Twitter's Tweetdeck product, where various pieces of content are viewed in columns, such as:

• "Home", a feed of toots of all followed users
• "Notifications", a feed of toots in which the user is mentioned or replied to
• "Local Timeline", a feed of all public toots on the user's instance
• "Federated Timeline", a feed of all public toots across all instances
• "Bookmarks", a feed of saved posts
• "Lists", a feed of certain public toots filtered by the user's criteria

This view changes to a single column and a series of buttons to select columns when viewed on a mobile platform (or if a web browser's width is reduced to a certain amount).

In addition to the website view, several apps for both mobile and desktop have been developed. As of November 2022, 22 apps are listed at Join Mastodon.

Mascot

As a whole, the mascot of Mastodon is the mastodon itself, a non-anthropomorphic predecessor of the mammoth and the elephant. However, administrators may introduce their own mascots, both anthropomorphic and not, as well as part of their instance's theme.

Mastodon and furry

Because of the level of customization and self-identification of Mastodon instances, as well as the ability to set privacy and visibility per toot, furry groups were among the first to create and populate instances.

Current furry-related instances include:

Website	Users	Focus	Registration
animal.business	43
awoo.chat	12		New users require approval.
awoo.fyi	79		Open registration.
awoo.space	1,732
awtter.me	13	Otters	New users require approval.
babyfurs.social	113	Babyfurs	New users require approval.
bark.lgbt	4,016		Open registration.
batchats.net	12	Bats	Open registration.
bears.town	52	Bears	New users require approval.
birdbutt.com	31	Avians, Birds	New users require approval.
blimps.xyz	451	Inflation	New users by invite only.
cackl.io	29	Hyenas	Open registration.
chillpeep.zone	27		Open registration.
chitter.xyz	1,062		New users require approval.
claws.blue	23
clockwork.monster	17	Monsters	Open registration.
cloudycrux.es	7	Cruxes	Open registration.
cubhub.social	528	Babyfurs	Open registration.
cyberfurz.social	227	Technology, VRChat	New users require approval.
dariox.club	115	Technology	New users require approval.
derg.social	12		Open registration.
dogbox.social	15	Fursuiting	New users require approval.
dook.business	23	Mustelids
dragonchat.org	147	Dragons	Open registration.
equestria.social	2,680	My Little Pony	New users require approval.
fellies.social	12		New users by invite only.
floofy.tech	124	Technology	Open registration.
fluffs.au	105	Oceanian furries	Open registration.
fur.city	9		New users by invite only.
furality.social	13	Furality Online Xperience convention	New users require approval.
furred.social	7		Open registration.
furries.club	571		New users require approval.
furry.energy	140		Open registration.
furry.engineer	945	Technology	New users require approval.
furryfandom.me	6
furs.social	40		Open registration.
fursuits.online	144	Fursuiting	New users require approval.
gulp.cafe	627	Vore	New users require approval.
hyper.equipment	60	Hypertrophilia	Open registration.
hyss.us	11	Reptiles, kobolds	New users require approval.
ibite.lol	103	Furry pornography	Open registration.
instafops.net	86	Furry art, Photography	Open registration.
kangaroo.to	60	Kangaroos	New users require approval.
kitsunes.club	122		Open registration.
kitsunet.net	73	Otherkin, therians	New users require approval.
macrofurs.social	444	Macro, micro	Open registration.
mastodon.furrybrigade.net	7	PhiliFur convention	New users require approval.
mastodon.furrycon.social	36	Furry conventions
mastodon.furrypaws.cc	47		Open registration.
mastodon.genderversefurries.com	10	Transgender furries	New users require approval.
mastodon.sergal.org	258	Sergals	New users by invite only.
meemu.org	394		New users by invite only.
meow.social	12,771		New users by invite only.
moth.zone	53
owo.town	29		Open registration.
packmates.org	29	Therians	New users require approval.
pawb.fun	888		New users require approval.
paws.town	2	Paws
pettingzoo.co	3,539
pixelfed.furryfandom.me	109	Furry art, photography	Open registration.
pixelfur.maw.best	145	Furry art	Open registration.
plush.city	485	Plush toys	New users require approval.
pony.social	357	My Little Pony	New users require approval.
pounced-on.me	241		New users require approval.
puppo.space	8		Open registration.
rawr.space	11	Dragons, scalies	Open registration.
red.fox.yt	105	Foxes	Open registration.
redwombat.social	27
shark.community	32	Sharks	New users require approval.
snaggletooth.life	148		New users require approval.
social.blimped.net	6	Inflation	New users require approval.
social.furry.nz	71	New Zealand furries	New users require approval.
social.furry.scot	13	Scottish furries
social.furryrefuge.com	264		Open registration.
social.khajiit.de	4	German furries	New users require approval.
social.pawsitiv.space	44		Open registration.
socialpa.ws	15		New users require approval.
squawk.social	55	Avians	Open registration.
squeak.social	62	Inflatables, balloonies	Open registration.
squeaky.social	10	Inflatables, balloonies	New users require approval.
stop.voring.me	1,117		Open registration.
supertails.social	7
synth.zip	13	Synths
tailswish.industries	22	Otherkin, therians	New users require approval.
thicc.horse	500	Body positivity, kink	New users require approval.
this.mouse.rocks	47		New users require approval.
tiggi.es	100	Body positivity, gaming, technology
toot.finfur.net	20	Finnish furries	New users require approval.
transfur.social	182	Transformation	Open registration.
waff.club	5		Open registration.
were.party	26	Transformation	Open registration.
wobbl.xyz	232	Fatfurs	New users require approval.
woof.tech	130		Open registration.
wuff.space	22		New users require approval.
yiff.life	3,499		New users by invite only.

See also

• Mastodon on Wikipedia

External links

• Mastodon.org - Mastodon's official website
• Furry Fediverse, a listing of furry themed instances
• instances.social, a tool to help decide which instance to join
• Mastodon FAQ on GitHub
• mastodon.social, the original Mastodon instance
• Overview of Mastodon & Why I Like It by Ruth Tillman