Mastodon, the decentralized social media platform launched in 2016, has seen steady growth, particularly after waves of users left mainstream networks. Its open source model and federated structure have made it a significant player in the Fediverse.
However, maintaining and developing such a large-scale, community-focused project requires ongoing financial support. The Mastodon team has now introduced a new initiative aimed at helping sustain its operations and future development.
Mastodon's Donation Banner: What to Expect?
Mastodon is planning to add a donation banner to its official mobile apps for Android and iOS. The banner will appear on mastodon.social and mastodon.online, the two servers operated by the Mastodon team, and will only be shown to users with accounts older than four weeks.
They say the banner has been designed to be easily dismissible, so that it doesn't interfere with regular use. While it’s launching on mobile first, they plan to roll out the same feature on the web version in the near future.
Subsequently, the developers plan to offer the donation banner feature to other Mastodon severs, with each having the choice whether to enable it or not.
Announcing this change, The Mastodon Team explained that:
We know that collecting money can present complexities and questions. We’d like to figure out how to do this well, together with the community. This is not a corporate fundraising campaign: it’s an effort to secure the future of a more ethical and independent social web.
It’s an invitation to help us build a platform that truly belongs to all of us. Thank you for your support as we take another small step forwards in our fundraising efforts.
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Sourav Rudra
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