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Mastodon is making changes I hope to make his social network more interesting and easy to use, especially for many users who are looking for an alternative to X or Threads.
On Thursday, the social networking software developer said it is redesigning a large part of its platform by giving people a new look, which it hopes will appeal to organizations, as well as individuals.
Built on the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon it became well known later Elon Musk found Twitter, which is now called X, which caused some to start looking for other ways. The attraction of the platform is its decentralized nature, meaning that one company has no control over the algorithm, and users can move their accounts if they don’t like the way a particular server works or controls their domain.
However, the system is also more difficult compared to registering social networks such as X. On Mastodon, users must choose a server to join and have different times (local and federal), which can be confusing for newcomers. The process of following others on the job can be difficult, too.
Mastodon is still struggling to get more users, with numbers now hovering around 800,000 per month, down from million at the height of the Twitter drama.
Mastodon has been working in recent months to address various pain points that may be plaguing users. In February, that ease of access and adding other features that users expect, such as Quote Posts or “starter packs” called Collections.
Now that dealing with user profiles. The updated version makes a number of changes, most of which are cosmetic.
Things are changing
Instead of offering two views of a person’s posts (“posts” or “posts and answers”), similar to X, his profile has only one “Activities” with a drop-down menu. This allows users to configure other integrations, by turning on or off responses and adding them – the latter being Mastodon’s version of a repost.
Hashtags also now appear at the top of the Activity tab, allowing users to filter posts on the account by the tag they click.
Mastodon also left out carousels, which many users did not like. This feature is designed to meet the needs of those who want to publish multiple posts, and the needs of those who visit profiles to quickly access the most recent user posts. Now, Mastodon users who have multiple locked posts will have one, while the rest can be revealed by clicking the new “View all posts” button.
Some changes are made to explain Mastodon’s handling to newcomers. Unlike X or Threads, where users are @username, Mastodon’s handles have two @s in them – one indicating their account name and the other their server name. New discoveries explain this.
Users can control how their profile looks, too, with options to hide the “Media” or “Visual” tabs, if they prefer, or to hide feedback from their “Media” tab if they want to show off their work.
Custom fields in profiles, where users add things like links, pronouns, and other information, are displayed side-by-side, which means there is more vertical space available on the screen. These sections can now be updated on iOS and Android, too, and not online.
Some changes to the design make the profile less visible – such as the removal of the “following you” badge, and moving “your posts” that you choose and adding to their profile in the flood.
Profile updates can now be done from one place in the account settings, allowing users to manage activities like featured hashtags (which Mastodon now shows), links, and more.
Link verification – which is Mastodon’s tool for verifying someone’s integrity without being a middleman (or requiring payment, as on X) – is no longer included in the settings. Users can crop and add text to their photos and background images.
The updates will be available to the mastodon.social server and other servers that choose to run the nightly build. More servers will receive the update when the Mastodon 4.6 update arrives in a few weeks.
