📢 March 2026 #MastodonDesignAnnouncement
Dear members,
I hope everyone is doing well. The first two months of the year flew by, and I didn’t take the time to write my usual monthly announcements—my apologies.
I had to do the accounting for 2025, and it took me longer than expected, but it’s done! But before we look back at last year’s stats, let’s take a look at our server’s current ones.
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📊 Server stats:
Monthly active users: 314 (−1)
Halfyear active users: 481 (+13)
Total members: 1,405 (+34)
Total reports: 290 (+9)
Database: 41,51 GB / 44 GB (94.34%)
Media: 177.19 GB / 440 GB (40.27%)
⬆️ Server upgrade: v4.5.7
Changelog: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.7
📈 2025 financial results:
Total costs: €1,461 = €66 for domain name + €1,395 for masto.host
Total donations: €1,672 = €1,169 from Liberapay + €449 from Ko-fi + €54 from 2024
Balance: +€211
🎉 With this profit of €211, I donated €16 back to Mastodon and €26 to @iftas, and I’ve set aside the rest (€169) for 2026. Thanks to our supporters, I’m proud to say that our finances were balanced again in 2025, and we contributed to the development of Mastodon, and a safer and more trustworthy Fediverse!
📊 2025 server stats:
Average monthly active users (MAU) : ~312
Total users: 1371 (+207)
Total reports: 54
Database: between 34,29 GB and 46,73 GB
Disk Space Limit: between 40 GB and 48 GB
💶 Current year financial status:
Total costs: €232
Total donations: €216 = €12 from Liberapay + €35 from Ko-fi + €169 from 2025
Balance: −€16
💛 If you want to contribute to our server costs and become a supporter, the best way is Liberapay or tiny monthly subscriptions via Ko-fi. Again, a huge thank you to all our members who contributed in 2025 and made it possible for this server to continue to exist.
https://en.liberapay.com/timotheegoguely/
https://ko-fi.com/timotheegoguely
New custom emojis
Did you notice our new custom emojis? I added some design apps, web platforms and languages icons, and also some blobcats 
The whole list is available here: https://emojos.in/mastodon.design
As @rainerklute did a few days ago, please feel free to suggest other emojis if you have any ideas!
Best of Fediverse news
- The W3C has announced a new Social Web Working Group, starting January 15, 2026, to maintain and update the ActivityPub protocol: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-socialweb/2026Jan/0000.html
The group will be chaired by Darius Kazemi, who created Hometown Mastodon fork and the Fediverse Schema Observatory: https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/fediverse-schema-observatory/
- FOSDEM 2026 Social Web track videos are now available on their website: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/social-web/ The Open Source & EU Policy track also include an interesting panel about the Fediverse called “The Fediverse and the EU's Digital Services Act: solving the challenges of modern social media?”: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/W8RCMT-the_fediverse_and_the_eus_digital_services_act_solving_the_challenges_of_modern_/
- PieFed has seen a sustained growth of new users: https://piefed.social/c/fediverse/p/1739314/piefed-users-surge-continues#post_replies
- Mastodon announced that they are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment, where they’ll recommend “the closest server geographically that is in the correct language during the sign-up flow.” https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115989801184595302
- FediMTL is a conference about digital sovereignty and the social web, that was held on February 24 in Montreal, featuring keynotes from Cory Doctorow and 2 creators of the ActivityPub protocol, Christine Lemmer-Webber & Evan Prodromou: https://fedimtl.ca/#about
- Fediverse search engine Holos Discover shut down, showing structural issues how to distinguish between individual and community consent: https://toot.fedilab.app/@apps/116051469228002847
- Mastodon’s Fediverse Discovery Providers project, or Fediverse Auxiliary Service Providers (FASP), is building a specification for pluggable search and discovery services that any fediverse server can connect to, funded by an NGI Search grant: https://github.com/mastodon/fediverse_auxiliary_service_provider_specifications/tree/main
We heard you. #HolosDiscover has been shut down, all indexed data deleted, and the source code removed. We apologize for the misunderstanding. Our approach was built with the deepest respect for user consent, but we understand it could rightfully be seen as misusing the indexable flag that many users didn't consciously enable. This highlighted a real conversation the Fediverse needs about default settings. Thank you for the feedback.
- The Forkiverse, the Mastodon server launched in January by podcast hosts PJ Vogt (Search Engine), Kevin Roose, and Casey Newton (Hard Fork), has now been running for nearly two months and grown to around 10,000 registered accounts with roughly 3,600 monthly active users https://theforkiverse.com/about
- FediProfile, a fediverse take on the “link in bio” is being built, designed as a decentralized, privacy-respecting alternative to Linktree: https://hachyderm.io/@mapache/116139171460877859
- Emissary Dev @ben predicts Federated end-to-end encrypted messaging around June 2026: https://wedistribute.org/2026/02/fediverse-e2ee-coming/
- Mastodon published a blog post about their new Mastodon Share button: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/03/a-new-share-button/
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