Mastodon’s creator, Eugen Rochko, is stepping down as CEO of the open source, decentralized social network and X rival as part of the organization’s transition to a nonprofit structure, announced at the beginning of the year. The change is Mastodon’s most significant leadership overhaul to date, and one designed to ensure Mastodon’s longevity.

As part of the organization’s restructuring, Mastodon will be governed by a board of directors, which today includes Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Karien Bezuidenhout, Esra’a Al Shafei, Mastodon community director Hannah Aubry (who will be stepping down), and Felix Hlatky, who will be taking the role of executive director.

With the revamp, Mastodon has the potential to expand its business, product, and mission, without being dependent on a single person’s leadership. It will also give Rochko a break, as he’s been singularly focused on Mastodon for the past 10 years.

Going forward, Rochko will continue contributing to Mastodon as an adviser. He has also been compensated with a one-time payment of €1 million, given that he took less than a fair market salary over the years while building Mastodon.

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[–] 10 points 11 months ago

Finally we might get some real change and caring about moderation in general and tools.

Though given the terrible people the new ceo praised it doesn't look like it.

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  • 47 comments in c/fediverse@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 94 points 11 months ago

    Respect. He built something bigger than him and then knew that it was time to transition.

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  • [–] 93 points 11 months ago

    The organization has already transitioned to a nonprofit in the U.S. but is still working to set up a nonprofit in Belgium, or an AISBL, to replace the German entity, which lost its nonprofit status last year. Once established, the Belgian nonprofit will be the future home of the organization. In the meantime, the U.S.-based 501(c)(3) c nonprofit will own the trademark and other assets.

    Very important step.

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  • [–] 69 points 11 months ago

    You are to be compared with tech billionaires, with their immense wealth and layered support systems, but with none of the money or resources. It manifests in what people expect of you, and how people talk about you.

    https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/11/my-next-chapter-with-mastodon/

    People need to realize that open source projects don't create billionaires. In fact, they actually block billionaires from forming.

    Tech deci-millionaires get rich by creating a moat around something, then put a toll booth at the drawbridge. Tech billionaires do that but make sure to enclose something essential they have a monopoly on within the moat, and then capture any and all regulators who might try to interfere. Open Source software either makes it illegal to build a moat or allows anybody who's interested to build their own drawbridge. It's orders of magnitude harder to get rich with open source or free software. You basically have to put up a toll booth that's fully optional and somehow still get people to pay.

    We should all thank #JohnMastodon for his selfless acts, both starting Mastodon but also now knowing when to step down.

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  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago (13 children)

    and yet i still dont know how to use mastodon

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    What are you struggling with? Look for a server (that isn't mastodon.social) that fits your interests, sign up, browse the local or global timeline, follow interesing people, have fun!

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Not OP, but...

    Finding a single server that fits my interests is the first stumbling block. I follow 30-40 communities here, so I need to pick just one focus, which kinda sucks, TBF.

    So I picked one, It was too quiet, but it was a start, then I started looking for interesting people. Hardly anyone famous, the few that I did find ended up being the ones that turned out to be creeps in the news, even assuming they were real accounts, which is probably a generous assumption. When I finally found the few people I wanted to follow, they gradually disappeared over time to Bluesky.

    WIth their community lines being split per server and no discovery other than randomly finding someone with your tastes while bebopping around on your server. It wasn't a good experience.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    It was good of you for trying. I did almost the same thing, except once I had an account on my little server, I started finding interesting people right away on the explore tab of the app. I followed them, and followed the people they boosted, and generally had a great experience. It sounds like it just isn't for everyone and that's ok. It will just keep growing slowly on its own.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago

    I use mastodon.social and i have nearly 300 followers here. I dont know any server nor i do know how to find one that match with my interests. I am interested in generally anime, visual novel, jpop, art lgbt etc. twitter is one central website that servs all kind of people at once so it is not very quiet. mastodon.social is both quiet and I am having struggles to find someone famous and interesting entertaining here. Like bro on my feed posting something and gets zero likes. I do the same and the same happens to me.

    as rumba@lemmy.zip also states that the inactivity here is a major problem i also did the same my account here is from 2023 and we are about to enter 2026. I am also a dead account here.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    You know people told me to do this with Lemmy and I ended up choosing a lemmy.ml . I found out later I guess that’s the Antichrist and I shouldn’t have done that. What’s the best way to understand what server is kosher?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Mastodon.social, I guess?

    (I'm either right or someone will show up to correct me shortly, as per Murphy's law :P)

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Haha, o no. Mmmmh, I would go around server lists (heard good things about https://fedi.garden/ ) and then look at the public timeline of a server and also at the server rules. I did this for finding a new Pixelfed instance a few months ago (didn't find anything I liked) and it was interesting to see if people had just pasted the standard rules (kind of a red flag for me, personally), wrote some bs like "be nice to each other" or had taken care of thinking about this.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    Thank you Eugen, for everything.

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  • [+] -34 points 11 months ago (26 children)
  • [–] 34 points 11 months ago (22 children)
  • [–] 94 points 11 months ago* (8 children)

    Thank you for sharing

    Mastodon is bigger than me, and though the technology we develop on is itself decentralized—with heaps of alternative fediverse projects demonstrating that participation in this ecosystem is possible without our involvement—it benefits our community to ensure that the project itself which so many people have come to love and depend on remains true to its values. There are too many examples of founder egos sabotaging thriving communities, and while I’d like to think myself an exception, I understand why people would prefer better guardrails.

    That's nice of him to acknowledge that.

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  • [–] 26 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Eugen has always seemed pretty clear-eyed about this kind of thing.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    I don't think so. He often hold down PRs and when push them almost all the times makes sure that they wont be compatible with the majority of activtypub implementations.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    That may have been some time ago? The team has been larger than just Eugen for quite a while now. In terms of "won't be compatible with the majority of AP implementations", is there a specific PR that has been changed to make something incompatible? I'm not sure I understand what you are describing. I'd love to know where we can improve, here.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Mastodon doesn't have groups?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Right, but I mean, the platform was originally designed without them in mind, and there's no real reason why every piece of software needs to have every piece of functionality.. I'm can see why they wouldn't be prioritising it

    I suspect I would love it if groups were in mastodon, but I'm not entirely sure it won't backfire in some horrendous way (this is social media after all)

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    "This kind of thing" being big picture dynamics of how to run a social media project.

    I've also had a mastodon PR stall, but I think they get so many, many with competing demands, and have so few staff, that it's not really surprising that it's a bit mess on that front...

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  • [–] 85 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    I love and hate how Eugen starts this whole project, leads it into being something truly unique and wonderful that directly challenges some of the most evil and wealthy people on the planet, sets up institutional guardrails to make sure it will not be corrupted by any one individual gone mad with power, gives away his position after 10 years once he's sure the organization is in good hands, and then concludes in reflection that he does not "have the right personality" for running a project like this.

    I hope it has not been to hard for him, and that he'll look back at it all as a positive experience in spite of the negative interactions. I don't think any sane person has a personality that is "right" for the kind of abuse public figures receive on the internet. But from the perspective of Mastodon and the Fediverse, it seems pretty clear that he was exactly the right type of personality for the job—including by stepping down when the time felt right.

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  • [–] 24 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I get it and don't hate it. If one of my projects took off like that and gained traction the absolute LAST thing I'd want to be is CEO of the whole damn thing. That's just not who I am. I'd hope I'd be able to find and hand it off to someone more qualified for that position. So I totally get where Eugen is coming from as I would have done the exact same thing.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago

    I was on a non profit board where the founder realized he wasn't the right person for the job after 20 years of growing the org. It finally got to a point that he felt like the growth was beyond what he ever imagined or wanted.

    He was, on every metric, very successful. He grew the org from nothing, got millions of dollars in donations, amassed a huge base, and no one would have thought different if he just kept going.

    I remember sitting down with him one-on-one and asked him why. He thought about it for a minute and said, "It's time for someone to make it even better."

    Looking back, I think I see the exhaustion. To constantly innovate, to push people forward, to push the org, the mission....it was all one person at a time. He reached a point in both age and in life that it just wasn't something he could keep doing.

    He loved the mission so much he knew it deserved better.

    If that isn't leadership, I don't know what is.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    leads it into being something truly unique and wonderful that directly challenges some of the most evil and wealthy people on the planet,

    Everybody switched to BlueSky, not Mastodon. So, I feel like this whole project has been a failure, especially in the marketing dept.

    BlueSky barely got started in Feb, and people immediately jumped ship from Twitter by the millions. Mastodon started nine years ago, and people hardly know what it is.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    How is Bluesky nowadays? Seems very quiet the last time I checked

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Everyone who was on Twitter that couldn't handle X moved, it's hopping, their algorithm is as good at discovery as Reddit or Twitter. A great deal of my social network that was on facebook moved right over.

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  • [+] -29 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    But will they continue to moderate content by German leftist standards?

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