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, and 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/)
Mastodon includes 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/)
Mastodon acts as an OAuth2 provider, so 3rd party apps can use the REST and Streaming APIs. This results in a rich app ecosystem with a lot of choices!
The repository includes deployment configurations for **Docker and docker-compose** as well as specific platforms like **Heroku**, **Scalingo**, and **Nanobox**. For Helm charts, reference the [mastodon/chart repository](https://github.com/mastodon/chart). The [**standalone** installation guide](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/install/) is available in the documentation.
If you are using an IDE with [support for the Development Container specification](https://containers.dev/supporting), it will run the above `docker compose` commands automatically. For **Visual Studio Code** this requires the [Dev Container extension](https://containers.dev/supporting#dev-containers).
To get you coding in just a few minutes, GitHub Codespaces provides a web-based version of Visual Studio Code and a cloud-hosted development environment fully configured with the software needed for this project..
- Click this button to create a new codespace:<br>
[](https://github.com/codespaces/new?hide_repo_select=true&ref=main&repo=52281283&devcontainer_path=.devcontainer%2Fcodespaces%2Fdevcontainer.json)
- Wait for the environment to build. This will take a few minutes.
- When the editor is ready, run `foreman start -f Procfile.dev` in the terminal.
- After a few seconds, a popup will appear with a button labeled _Open in Browser_. This will open Mastodon.
- On the _Ports_ tab, right click on the “stream” row and select _Port visibility_ → _Public_.
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 Crowdin. 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/>.
