Mastodon's yearly study 2021

Yesterday published first yearly report, summarizing the improvement of Mastodon in 2021. alternatively of translating the text of the study (although it is short), I decided to describe its content and add my, subjective comment.

In 2021, Mastodon became a non-profit limited liability company. As a result, resources specified as the joinmastodon.org website, authoritative instances became owned by that entity and Mastodon's revenues (e.g. from task sponsors) became gross Mastodon gGmbH. The creator of Mastodon now receives a fixed wage (less than the erstwhile one), and the task may receive tax-exempt donations.

Objectively, however, the most crucial effect of the change is that identifying the task creator – Eugene Rochko as CEO of Mastodon has ceased to be only popular on the meme platform.

The task received a full of €55 300 from patrons on Patreon portal and sponsors on dedicated platform. The task besides received €8 900 from the fund Prototype Fund financed by the German Ministry of Education and investigation and the German Open cognition Foundation. The NLnet Foundation besides decided to allocate €45,000 to the improvement of Mastodon in 2022 under a European Commission-funded programme NGI Zero.

In the past year, alternatively of crucial changes in the code of Mastodon himself, the focus was on the improvement of UX, primarily creating official iOS app, in cooperation with Lickability and Sujitech. The moderator interface has been improved, as well as a bit of attractive looking graphs showing data on server activity in the administration panel.

The welcome screen of the fresh user was replaced by a page containing the profiles recommendations selected by the admin of the instance, and the display of the most commonly shared links to articles was added. Work on the anticipation of editing entrieswhich is already part of the developmental version of Mastodon.

Legal action was taken towards 2 platforms utilizing Mastodon code. The first 1 was Gab – a social platform that had existed since 2016, which in 2019 replaced its underdeveloped, complete mistake code with a Mastodon-based solution. In March 2021, after the full database of the portal was leaked in connection with the usage of SQL injection susceptibility resulting from the deficiency of any competence with developers working for Gab, it was decided to halt publishing the current origin code of the platform (to find more gaps?), thereby violating the terms of the AGPLv3 license. In October 2021, after sending an appropriate call to Gab's legal department, the platform published the origin code.

In this case, we have been faced with a conscious violation of the license, and I powerfully support this. However, I must criticise taking akin action against the fact Social platform associated with Donald Trump. Work on it was announced in October 2021. The same day, journalists found the domainunder which non-public platform tests were carried out. It was rapidly noted that it was based on Mastodon's code, so steps akin to Gab's were taken. In response, November 12, on a website announcing fact Social, on a subpage containing legal information link published to the platform origin code.

However, I believe that in the case of a platform that has not even officially taken off, but only the test environment has got into the hands of inquisitive journalists (not long after it was shut off), this is an utmost activity. Of course, I would support them if the platform could launch without complying with the license.

However, I do not see any action at all with respect to a reasonably popular instance utilizing modified Mastodon without sharing the origin code, which focuses on promoting conspiracy explanation and alternate medicine (owned by the owner of the portal selling supplements). Would the subject be besides small media?

At the end of the plans for 2022.
Most likely the loudest change will be implementation groups. The anticipation of creating moderated, thematic communities available from 1 account on 1 platform actually drove distant the net forums that made the net more decentralised years ago. Mastodon is not the only platform in Fediversum that is presently working on the implementation of the Federated Groups.

On the list we will besides find changes in Post filteringand the anticipation to make customized user roles defined by the instance administrator.

Next mark – authoritative Android app – is what I enjoy most. But not just due to the fact that it will rise. We can learn that the author of the application will be Gregory Klyushnikov, known in Fediversum as the platform author Smithereenof which I've already written here.. What does that mean? We can learn, among another things, that it will be a light and efficient application, compared to popular social platforms applications. I'm waiting for more details.

It will besides be further developed iOS app, among another things, iPad support will be improved. Service completion is besides planned E2E encrypted messages, which would be a more convenient and safer alternate to the current direct message system, based on standard alerts with limited visibility.

Marcin Santa (cruci forgot to sign)