mastodon - Link to source
Hi! Today is my first official day as the Executive Director of Mastodon, replacing @Gargron as CEO. I joined the Mastodon team more than 5 years ago, mostly working for Mastodon in the evenings on top of a 120% day job. I was the driving force behind the incorporation of the German non-profit, am a co-founder of the US 501c3 non-profit, and I have contributed to most of the fundraising success, which allowed us to expand the team.
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@Eugen Rochko
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

I’m humbled to be given this opportunity and want to tell you a bit more about myself and how I think about the future of Mastodon and the Fediverse. I have a business and finance background. I have worked for technology companies my whole career but have become increasingly tired of the extractive venture capital model of financing them, which only works for the rare outliers and seemingly never leads to the best product humans deserve.
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in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

Mastodon and the Fediverse matter to me because they present a truly viable alternative to this model, by showing its users no advertisement, respecting users’ privacy, focussing on keeping users safe, and allowing them to connect to the Fediverse and beyond rather than putting them into a digital prison to extract as much metadata about them to please advertisers.
(3/13)
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

My vision for Mastodon is a different direction than all previous attempts at social media, by focussing on community ownership, Trust & Safety features, slow user & server growth, and financial sustainability - for the non-profit project, the server administrators, the moderators, and creators in the Fediverse. I’m thrilled to have @haubles as Community Director and @renchap as Technical Director on my side in making this vision a reality.
(4/13)
@Renaud Chaput @hannah aubry
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

My personal heroes and projects I admire are @signalapp @Mer__edith @torproject @gnome @thunderbird @ryanleesipes . I’d much rather have Mastodon be inspired by the contributions of these people and projects to the FOSS and non-profit technology world than trying to rebuild early Twitter.
(5/13)
@Ryan Lee Sipes ⚡🦅 @The Tor Project @GNOME @Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox @Signal @Meredith Whittaker

reshared this

in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

I have huge respect for everyone contributing to the Fediverse: the larger-than-life architects like @cwebber @evan (without whom we would literally all not be here), implementers like @dansup bringing photo & video to it, new projects like @newsmast @michael @FreddieJ @saskia @bonfire @ivan @mayel orgs like @Flipboard @mike @john @ghost @activitypub.blog @pfefferle bringing the media over to the Fediverse, and @rileytestut @altstore for trying out completely new things.
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@Matthias Pfefferle @dansup @Bonfire @Riley Testut @Evan Prodromou @AltStore @Flipboard @Mike McCue @Christine Lemmer-Webber @John O'Nolan @Ghost @ivan @ActivityPub for WordPress @Mayel @Newsmast Foundation @Michael Foster @Freddie Johnson @Saskia
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

Thanks to amazing people like
@jaz @iftas @swf @mallory @bjoernsta @j12t we can see through topics larger than us related to policy, regulation, protocol development as well as how to deal with spam attacks, how to design a safer product for everyone, and how to deal with occasional interpersonal conflicts in our beautiful part of the internet.
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@jaz @Mallory Knodel @IFTAS @Björn Staschen @Johannes Ernst @Social Web Foundation
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

I want to send my heartfelt thanks @karienbez @alshafei for their wisdom and emotional support during this crazy journey so far, to @codinghorror @biz for your visionary strategic & financial support without which this restructuring would not have been possible, and to the team of Paul Hastings for your pro-bono legal advice.
(9/13)
@Biz Stone @Jeff Atwood @Esra'a @karienbez
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

Thanks @Gargron for allowing us to do this the pure non-profit and FOSS way by saying no to earlier offers, some of which would have given you more than 10x the payout. I have been inspired by your vision about this project from the moment I met you 5+ years ago. It takes a lot of courage and greatness to let this project go. Super excited for continuing to work with you!
(10/13)
@Eugen Rochko
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

But Mastodon wouldn’t be where it is without so many more people than Eugen. I’m incredibly grateful to be able to work with the best team we’ve ever had. Each one of you brings so much value to the Mastodon project and I want to thank you for making our mission your day job while you could certainly earn double or triple at one of our for-profit competitors.
(11/13)
in reply to Felix Hlatky

mastodon - Link to source

Felix Hlatky

We’re still an absolute skeleton crew of 14 people, competing with teams sometimes 100x as large as ours. To get to our humble team size was only possible through the less than 1% community members who donate to Mastodon, a handful larger donations, & EU grants, all of which we are forever grateful for. We still have a large funding need for 2026, so please consider making a donation before the year-end if you’d like us to continue building and improving Mastodon joinmastodon.org/sponsors#dona…
(12/13)

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