Mastodon: Social network server where users can follow
Mastodon is a self-hosted activitypub / fediverse and social media tool. Social network server where users can follow friends and discover new ones.
Why self-host Mastodon
The case for running Mastodon at home is straightforward: you get the full feature set, no subscription cost, and no data sitting on someone else’s server.
What it does
Mastodon falls into the ActivityPub / Fediverse, Social Media category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 47k stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Most users run Mastodon via Docker Compose. The typical setup involves one or two containers and a volume for persistent data.
Maturity
The current release is 4.2.10. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.
License
It is licensed under AGPL-3.0, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.
Links
Whether you are just starting with self-hosting or adding to an existing setup, Mastodon is a reasonable pick in the activitypub / fediverse and social media space.