Mastodon is a **free, open-source social network server** based on ActivityPub where users can follow friends and discover new ones. On Mastodon, users can publish anything they want: links, pictures, text, video. All Mastodon servers are interoperable as a federated network (users on one server can seamlessly communicate with users from another one, including non-Mastodon software that implements ActivityPub)!
It doesn't have to be Mastodon, whatever implements ActivityPub is part of the social network! [Learn more](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the-future/)
See the updates of people you're following appear in real-time in the UI via WebSockets. There's a firehose view as well!
**Media attachments like images and short videos**
Upload and view images and WebM/MP4 videos attached to the updates. Videos with no audio track are treated like GIFs; normal videos are looped - like vines!
Private posts, locked accounts, phrase filtering, muting, blocking and all sorts of other features, along with a reporting and moderation system. [Learn more](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/07/cage-the-mastodon/)
The repository includes deployment configurations for **Docker and docker-compose**, but also a few specific platforms like **Heroku**, **Scalingo**, and **Nanobox**. The [**stand-alone** installation guide](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/) is available in the documentation.
You can open issues for bugs you've found or features you think are missing. You can also submit pull requests to this repository, or submit translations using Weblate. To get started, take a look at [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md). If your contributions are accepted into Mastodon, you can request to be paid through [our OpenCollective](https://opencollective.com/mastodon).
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
