Social Media Platforms Release Notes
Release notes for popular social media platforms
Products (7)
Latest Social Media Platforms Updates
- May 12, 2026
- Date parsed from source:May 12, 2026
- First seen by Releasebot:May 13, 2026
Introducing TikTok GO: A new way to discover and book experiences on TikTok
TikTok launches TikTok GO in the United States, letting people discover and book hotels, attractions and tours directly in the app. Built into videos, search and location pages, it connects creator inspiration with local businesses and travel partners.
Below is today's news made by TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.
Every day, people come to TikTok to find their next adventure, like the hotel with the view that sparked their interest, the hidden gem restaurant a creator swears by, or the experience they didn't know they needed. Today, we’re announcing TikTok GO, a new way for people in the United States to discover and book local services, including hotels, attractions, and tours, directly on TikTok.
Built into the app more than 200 million Americans use, TikTok GO helps connect the places and experiences people discover on TikTok with the businesses behind them. Whether planning a weekend trip, looking for something to do nearby, or following a creator recommendation, people can explore and book in just a few taps.
How it works
TikTok GO surfaces lodging and things to do across the ways people already discover content on TikTok – through videos, search, and location pages. When users find something they love, they can view details, check availability, and complete a booking in just a few simple steps.
TikTok GO makes it easier for people to discover and book hotels and experiences directly on TikTok. With partners spanning accommodations and experiences – including Booking.com, Expedia, Viator, GetYourGuide, Tiqets, and Trip.com – TikTok GO is bringing a wider range of travel inspiration and booking opportunities onto the platform. Users must be at least 18 years old to book an experience through TikTok GO.
Turning discovery into action
TikTok is already where America discovers what’s next. Now it’s where they can book it. Tens of thousands of new posts shared each day across accommodations and things to do show how discovery is already happening on TikTok – and TikTok GO helps turn that momentum into action.
“Every day on TikTok, millions of people discover where to eat, where to stay, and what to do next. TikTok GO connects that moment of inspiration directly to the businesses behind it, and that’s good for creators, good for local businesses, and good for communities.” – Adam Presser, CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture
For businesses and creators
TikTok GO gives local businesses and travel partners a new way to reach people who are already looking for inspiration. By connecting merchants with TikTok’s discovery ecosystem across video, search, and location pages, TikTok GO helps businesses reach new audiences, drive bookings, and build stronger connections with the communities they serve.
“We’re excited to collaborate with TikTok to turn those ‘I wish I were there’ moments into real stays with TikTok GO. By bringing Booking.com directly into the TikTok journey, travellers can move from discovering a dream accommodation in a video to securing their stay in just a few taps — making it easier than ever to turn inspiration into unforgettable experiences.” – Mark van der Linden, VP Partnerships, Booking.com
"Our partnership with TikTok marks a major shift in how travel experiences are booked through TikTok GO – enabling travelers to move directly from discovery to a seamless booking. Whether it's visiting the Vatican or checking out a cooking class in Tokyo, we're collapsing the time between inspiration and action. With over 200,000 experiences across 12,000 destinations, GetYourGuide is well-positioned to power that moment at scale, giving our operators – many of them small, local businesses – direct access to a massive, travel-hungry audience. Experiences have become the primary reason people travel, not an afterthought. With TikTok GO, we're at the center of that transformation, right at the moment of inspiration." – Johannes Reck, Co-Founder & CEO, Get Your Guide
For creators, TikTok GO turns local storytelling into a real rewards opportunity. Creators who feature hotels, attractions, and local services can connect their content directly to bookings, with opportunities to earn through commissions and creator campaigns.
TikTok has long been a place where discovery begins. And just as TikTok Shop helps people turn discovery into action, TikTok GO makes it easier to turn inspiration into real-world experiences – and this is just the beginning of how we’ll continue to connect people with the places and businesses they love.
Original source - May 2026
- No date parsed from source.
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Mastodon Profile Redesign
Mastodon introduces a redesigned profile experience with a new Activity tab, clearer handle explanations, easier pinned post browsing, and a more unified profile editor. The update also adds better hashtag discovery, custom fields on mobile, and image cropping with alt text support.
Profiles are the primary way for people using Mastodon to ‘meet’ one another on a deeper level – beyond a threaded conversation or search results. You might have noticed that the overall design of Profiles hasn’t been explored in a while, and in the meantime, we’ve heard requests and challenges from people who use Mastodon every day.
The profile redesign supports some of our current priorities:
- Make the Fediverse Intuitive. We want people who are new to Mastodon and the Fediverse to be able to discover and connect with interesting accounts, without having to understand the details of decentralisation. The new Profiles view includes an updated handle explainer, and a new editing experience delivers a more consistent, unified experience across web and native mobile apps.
- A Home for Everyone. As well as individuals, Mastodon is also home to organisations (NGOs, local governments, software projects, etc) that want to share news and interact with their communities. The layout changes offer us a solid starting point from which to explore features that will help these “institutional users” to make their most out of their presence in the Fediverse.
Our approach
Learning from the community
In addition to reviewing community requests related to profiles, we surveyed more than 500 people across over 300 servers, to understand what profile information they prioritise when it comes to identifying whether an account is trustworthy (and therefore, worth following). We also analysed patterns from other apps that respondents mentioned they frequently use.
Technical constraints
We’re currently constrained within the existing 3-column layout on desktop.
We also know that improvements could be made to the custom fields feature, but structural and backend changes to custom fields were out of scope for this work.What’s changing
Profile viewing
The new ‘Activity’ tab offers granular filtering of posts
Previously, there have been two tabs for “Posts” and “Posts and replies.” It turns out that this was misleading (the “Posts” tab also included boosts); and, that there was no way for you to view an account’s activity with the granularity that you can after following them – no view for Posts only, for example.
There are, in fact, 4 distinct views that you may want to see:
Posts, Posts+boosts, Posts+replies, or Posts+boosts+replies. Providing this granularity led us to adopt a more appropriate UI over displaying each of these as tabs.
The new Activity tab has a dropdown menu, allowing you to view any of these combinations by filtering both boosts and replies. It is optimised to work equally well for you on the desktop as on mobile, and also if you use the advanced interface for desktop.Featured hashtags are more discoverable and contextual
Hashtags can provide you with topic-based discovery. In the new Profile view, you can view hashtags contextually within the Activity tab, and click on them for a filtered view of the account’s tagged posts.
It’s easier to view all pinned posts
Some people have expressed frustration over pinned posts being buried in a carousel. We understand this concern, and are also balancing the needs of people who are browsing others’ profiles who have shared that they want easy access to recent posts.
Informed by data on the number of pinned posts across Mastodon profiles, we’ve replaced the carousel with an alternative form of progressive disclosure that allows you to reveal all pinned posts in a single click.Updated handle explainers
One of our objectives is to make the Fediverse more intuitive for people who are non-technical. We’ve updated the handle explainer card to clarify what handles and servers are.
Additionally, the full profile handle (@[email protected]) now displays beneath the account’s display name, even if the account is on the same server as yours.Custom fields are more compact
Custom fields display side-by-side when possible, making smarter utilisation of the Profile’s vertical space so that you get to the account’s content more swiftly.
Additional changes reduce visual load
People must be able to find the content they need. However, when all information displays at once, it impacts your ability to focus and complete tasks.
You might notice we’ve given less prominence to a few pieces of information. When introducing changes that add friction, we take into account both the frequency and importance of related actions.Personal notes: The ‘Add a personal note’ action does not display as prominently on the profile; it is now accessed within the profile’s overflow menu. If a note exists, it still displays on the profile page, just as it has in the past.
‘Following you’: The ‘Following you’ badge no longer displays on the profile. People we surveyed ranked this information remarkably low in terms of establishing both trust and interest an account. You still have numerous options to understand whether someone is following you:- The ‘Follow’ button: When you’re not following an account but the account follows you, the primary button label displays as “Follow back”.
- The accounts ‘Following’ list: If the account is following you, you will see yourself at the top of that account’s ‘Following’ list.
- Profile overflow menu: If the account is following you, a ‘Remove follower’ option appears in the overflow menu.
- Preview cards (desktop): When hovering over an account, the preview cards still show ‘Follows you’ and ‘You follow each other’ statuses.
Note: we’ve heard your feedback in the early roll-out, and the ‘Following you‘ badge has been brought back in the current development build; we’re still iterating on these changes, so look out for the release announcement (when 4.6 launches) for information about any other tweaks between now and then.
Profile editing
A unified editing experience
Previously, profile editing on web was hidden within account settings. You had to take multiple steps to navigate back to your profile view.
The new profile editing experience combines featured hashtags, link verification, and all other profile customisation in a single view. It’s easily accessible from an ‘Edit profile’ button directly on your profile – making switching between viewing and editing more seamless.More control during image upload
You can now crop images, and add alt text to profile and cover photos.
Custom fields and verified links
Previously, custom field editing was only available on web, and lacked accessible form labels. Additionally, link verification – a powerful feature for establishing credibility – was hidden in profile settings.
Now, you can access link verification instructions directly from the custom field editing experience. You can also now add and edit custom fields in our iOS and Android apps.Featured hashtags
Featured hashtags are a useful way of helping others discover topics you frequently post about. We’ve decreased the friction and guesswork in adding featured hashtags on web: Suggested hashtags will appear on your profile view, and can be bulk added in a single click.
For more granular control, hashtags can also be managed within the profile editor.
Basic functionality for featured hashtags is now supported on iOS and Android.Customising tab displays
The editing experience includes profile tab display settings, allowing you to hide the ‘Media’ and ‘Featured’ tabs if desired.
Replies can also be excluded from the ‘Media’ tab, allowing for a more accurate gallery where creative people may showcase their work. We hope that these additional controls empower both people who use Mastodon day-to-day, and people who represent institutions.
Before the 4.6 release, profile tab customisations will only impact a few servers that are testing the new profile experience. After the 4.6 release, these customisations will be reflected on most servers running the latest version of Mastodon. Displays may vary on third-party apps and independent servers.Availability
The new design will be visible on mastodon.social, and other servers that run nightly builds of Mastodon, from today. The goal is to do some testing ahead of the 4.6 release, and make any adjustments based on feedback (see below). The new look will roll out to all Mastodon servers, as part of Mastodon 4.6, coming in a few weeks.
We’re open to feedback
We’ve shared our thinking, and the choices we made in this redesign, in this post. If you have things you’d like to let us know related to these updates, contact us at [email protected]. We may not be able to respond to every individual message, but we’ll be reading every piece of feedback to inform our future plans.
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- May 2026
- No date parsed from source.
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Mastodon 4.5
Mastodon releases 4.5 with richer cross-community conversations, quote posts with privacy controls, automatic fetching of missing replies, stronger moderator tools, new server admin options, and native emoji support across the web interface.
Mastodon 4.5 has arrived, with enhanced conversations across communities, expanded moderator tools, and new ways for admins to showcase their server communities. Read on for more details.
As always, if you use mastodon.social, you may already have seen some of the updates as they gradually showed up across the user experience. Rolling out a new stable release enables us to share all of that goodness across the whole Mastodon community. We encourage all server operators to upgrade to Mastodon 4.5, starting today.
🔍 If you’re a developer building on Mastodon, you should check out our Mastodon 4.5 for Developers post, for all the additions and changes in the Mastodon API. 🛠
Quote Posts: Consent and Conversation
Quoting has been integral to deepening discussions online, and it’s now available in Mastodon 4.5. This release not only introduces authoring capabilities but also mechanisms prioritizing user safety and privacy. Authors can limit and disable quoting, both globally on the new Posting Defaults page, and individually on specific posts. Also, when quoted, they can easily revoke the use of their post.
Learn more about Quote posts in our previous blog post, our FAQ, and our developer implementation guide.
Fetch All Replies: Completing the Conversation Flow
Users on servers running 4.4 and earlier versions have likely experienced the confusion of seeing replies appearing on other servers but not their own. Mastodon 4.5 automatically checks for missing replies upon page load and again every 15 minutes, enhancing continuity of conversations across the Fediverse.
Enhanced Features for Server Administrators
For server operators, especially those running smaller, organisational instances, we continue to deliver new tools that enable greater instance customisation:
- Feed Management
The ability to disable some of the content feeds for either visitors or logged-in users, offering greater control over content flow.
- Visitor Homepage
In addition to trends or about pages, administrators can now set the local feed as the home page for visitors. This is useful for small organization servers where there are seldom any trending posts, allowing visitors to see local activity immediately.
- Targeted Blocking
Server owners now have tools to block specific usernames. This process can be configured with options for partial matches or character variations, or to mark a potential user match as needing review by a moderator.
- Moderation Context
The moderator interface has received improvements to display crucial context, such as link previews and quote posts in messages, supporting more rapid and informed decision-making.
Native Emoji support
The web interface now includes support for displaying native emoji. A new setting is available to manage how emoji appear to you.
Looking ahead
Our team is already working on Mastodon 4.6 (tentatively planned for the first quarter of next year). We shared our early explorations around Packs and are planning to include the first parts of this feature in our next version. It will also include improvements to onboarding, and some features targeted toward institutions with a presence on Mastodon, thanks to a grant by NLNet and NGI Zero Commons Fund.
We just updated our public roadmap to provide better transparency on what is currently in the works, and what we are planning to focus on next.
Support Mastodon
Thank you to everyone that contributed to this release, including our team, our community, and the many contributors from across the Fediverse. We’re excited to continue building Mastodon together with you.
We’re going through a formal process of setting up a new European non-profit organisation (more update on this topic very soon!) so that Mastodon remains free, open, and not owned by any single individual .
We depend on your support as we build, support, and advocate for decentralised and non-commercial social media.
We don’t take venture capital, we don’t sell ads, and we don’t sell your data - unlike many other platforms out there.
Please support our mission, so that we can continue to make Mastodon better.
Thank you for supporting Mastodon
We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.
Original source - May 2026
- No date parsed from source.
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Quote posts in Mastodon 4.5
Mastodon introduces quote posts with user-controlled quoting, letting people quote posts from the Boost menu while keeping safety and consent in focus. Users can disable quoting by default, limit it per post, and manage revocation and notifications.
Over the years, we’ve learned just how essential quoting is to many of you. When done responsibly, quoting allows us to expand discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices.
Quoting is a powerful tool, and like any tool, it can be misused. That’s why we’ve taken time to introduce quotes in a way that aligns with Mastodon values, focusing on safety and mental health – not just on engagement. We shared our thinking about bringing quote posts to Mastodon earlier in the year.
Found something inspiring? Quote your favourite posts from where you typically boost them. Don’t want to be quoted? Disable quoting by default for all posts, or turn off quoting for a specific post. Want your thoughts to inspire a wider audience? Keep the default setting enabled to ‘Anyone’. You’re in control of how much or how little you engage.
Quote post functionality will arrive on mastodon.online and mastodon.social next week, and will be available in Mastodon 4.5 soon thereafter. Read on for a more detailed look at how quote posts will look and function in Mastodon 4.5.
Quote anyone who wants to be quoted
Quoting from the Boost menu
If an author of a post has enabled quoting, you’ll see an option to quote their post under a new menu accessed from the Boost button. Your post will then appear within the composer window, where you can add your comment and post to continue the discussion.
Power booster? You can still boost quickly using Shift + Click on the Boost button or using the B hotkey.
Quote responsibly. Authors can remove their post if they’re uncomfortable with the way you’ve quoted them. See Notifications and Revocation for more details.
Quoting across the Fediverse
Mastodon shares space in the Fediverse with other software that may behave differently. In practice, it means it’s possible that when you quote a post from another Fediverse platform, it may take some time for the quote to appear. When the content is available, it will automatically update on your post.
We worked on a technical specification for the Fediverse that offers the concept of consent-respecting quote posts. We’ve also collaborated with other apps and services to make this work between platforms. We expect that not every platform will update to use this specification right away, but we hope to see more of them do so in the future.
You’re in control of who quotes you
Default settings
Disable or limit quotes by navigating to Settings -> Preferences -> Posting Defaults. These defaults will apply to all future posts you create.
(Note: if your server is running Mastodon 4.4.x, you will find this setting under Settings -> Preferences -> Other instead)
Your visibility setting controls options for who can quote. When you make a followers-only post, others (including followers) won’t be able to quote it – this ensures that your post remains visible to only your followers.
Post-level settings
Override your global settings for an individual post by navigating to Visibility and interaction settings within the composer.
Notifications and revocation
When someone quotes one of your posts, you’ll be notified. You can easily remove your original post from theirs, using the ••• Options menu.
Sometimes, removing your post from a single quote may not be enough. If you believe someone is abusing the ability to quote you, you can also take the following actions:
- Block the user. While this action won’t retroactively remove your post from posts the user has already published, it will prevent the user from quoting you in future posts.
- Change the quote settings for your published post. The next section outlines how to do this.
Changing quote settings on a published post
On your own published posts, edit the quote settings from the ••• menu. Changes will prevent users from quoting your post in the future, but will not apply retroactively to quotes already published.
Only public and quiet public posts can be edited this way; your followers-only posts and direct mentions can only ever be quoted by you.
Stay tuned
As we mentioned at the start, quote post functionality will arrive on mastodon.online and mastodon.social next week. If you use a third-party app, the feature may not show up right away, and you may need to wait for the author to add it. It will be available more widely when Mastodon 4.5 is released in the near future.
Developing a Mastodon client? Visit our draft developer implementation guide and documentation.
For more information on how to use quote posts, have a look at the FAQ section of the documentation.
If you’d like to preemptively opt out of being quoted, you can do so on Mastodon 4.4 under Settings -> Preferences -> Other.
We’re committed to making quote posts a tool for meaningful discourse. If you have thoughts on our quote post feature, contact us at [email protected]. We may not be able to respond to every individual message, but we’ll be reading every piece of feedback to learn more about your ideas.
Gratitude
We’d like to thank the NGI Entrust Fund and NLNet for their support towards building this feature for Mastodon and ActivityPub.
Original source - May 2026
- No date parsed from source.
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Mastodon 4.4
Mastodon releases 4.4 with richer profiles, smoother list and media controls, improved mobile navigation, stronger onboarding, new admin and moderation tools, and support for viewing Quote Posts from compatible Fediverse platforms.
Mastodon 4.4 is here, bringing you new ways to showcase yourself, manage your growing network, and enjoy what’s in your timeline. Administrators and moderators also gain new tools for keeping communities safe.
As always, if you use mastodon.social, you may already have seen some of the updates as they gradually showed up across the user experience. Rolling out a new stable release enables us to share all of that goodness across the whole Mastodon community. We encourage all server operators to upgrade to Mastodon 4.4, starting today.
🔍 If you’re a developer building on Mastodon, you should check out our Mastodon 4.4 for Developers post, for all the additions and changes in the Mastodon API. 🛠
Profiles, and managing your network
Your profile is the main way that people find out more about you on Mastodon, and we want to make it easier to navigate it and highlight what you’re about.
Do you post all of your cat pictures under #CatsOfMastodon? Simply tap “Feature on my profile” on the hashtag page, and people will be able to browse all of your #CatsOfMastodon posts specifically from the new “Featured” tab on your profile. Do you want to promote cool and interesting accounts? Tap “Feature on my profile” on a person’s profile, and they will likewise appear on your “Featured” tab.
On Mastodon, you can pin up to 5 posts on your profile, so you can feature your best work, or plug your latest project. The downside is that if you wanted to see someone’s most recent post, it introduced a bit of scrolling to get there. No more! We’ve reduced the amount of scrolling you have to do, by combining all pinned posts in a single carousel at the top of the profile.
To make it easier to see at a glance if the profile belongs to someone you might know, we’ve added a little widget showing how many of the people you follow are following that person to the top of their profile. This also shows up in the profile preview that appears when you hover over their name somewhere else. Don’t want someone to follow you anymore? You don’t have to block them, simply tap “Remove follower” in the dropdown menu on their profile.
Enhanced list management
Lists in Mastodon allow you to declutter your home feed by organising accounts you follow into arbitrary alternative feeds. Creating and managing lists has been significantly streamlined, and it’s easier than ever to add and remove accounts from your lists both directly from profiles and from your own follows and followers listings.
Media controls
Mastodon doesn’t just support pictures and videos—you can upload audio on the platform. Since every Mastodon profile comes with an RSS feed, some people actually publish their podcasts this way. We’ve just given our audio player a facelift, making it a bit more visually pleasant and a lot easier to use by putting the play and pause front and centre and adding quick shortcuts for skipping forward and backward. We’ve also expanded hotkey controls for audio and video: left and right arrow to skip around, up and down arrow to control the volume, “m” to mute, “f” for full screen, and so on.
If you like to pixel-peek images, or admire the pleasant grain of scanned in analogue photos, we’ve made zooming in more intuitive: simply double tap the image once you’ve clicked to open it. Panning around has also been made smoother. On touch devices, you can now pinch the image with your fingers to zoom it to the desired level, and swiping up when the image is zoomed out will close it, like you would expect from your native photo app.
We are proud of Mastodon’s strong accessibility and inclusivity culture, which has fostered a larger presence of vision impaired users. To support this community, we’ve added a new reminder to add alt text when posting images or video. Alt text isn’t just helpful to those who use screen readers: it can provide extra context to sighted users, and as it’s indexed in Mastodon’s search system, it can help you and others find your post better. Of course, this reminder can be disabled from preferences. We’ve also added some tips on writing good alt text into the user interface.
Navigation enhancements
We’ve revamped the mobile web interface to mimic native apps, with important actions easily accessible in a bottom toolbar that frees up more space for your timeline. We’ve also begun experimenting with ways to make navigation more consistent across devices, and to make relevant content (like followed hashtags and trending content) more easily discoverable. The Explore item has been renamed to Trending, to reduce the need for banners within the Explore page to explain each feed. The navigation sidebar is divided into three sections. At the top is a section for the main navigation areas, which mirrors the bottom navigation bar on smaller screens. Next, a “Library” section, which contains your own curated content - bookmarks, favourites, and lists, and your followed hashtags, now in a more visible location (in response to community feedback). Finally, other elements are in the last section. This brings all the navigation elements into a single place.
We’ve also streamlined the onboarding flow for new users. What used to be a list of four items you could check off as part of onboarding, has become a simpler two-step process where you first fill out your profile, and then follow a few users of your choosing. Importantly, we’ve made search an integral part of this process so people don’t feel confined to the list of recommended accounts we’ve generated for them, but can feel free to immediately begin searching for people they might know.
Features for Administrators
We’ve made a range of updates and improvements for people who operate their own Mastodon servers. Some of these are legal compliance features, such as adding and managing Terms of Service, offering translations of server rules into different languages, and optionally setting a minimum age requirement for new user sign-ups. Our earlier blog post covers each of these topics in more detail.
As well as the legal features, there are a couple of other useful items that administrators should look at. Server owners can now send important announcements to all users via email, for critical communications that cannot be opted out of (essential for emergency notifications, or major policy changes). There is also a new system for moderators to keep internal notes about moderation decisions and user interactions. This should help to improve coordination across moderation teams, and help to keep track of decision making.
Quote Posts (part one)
Earlier in the year, we shared our thought process about bringing the much-requested Quote Posts feature to Mastodon. We’ve worked hard on bringing this capability to the platform while maintaining the strong safety principles that Mastodon is known for. Since Mastodon runs on over 8,000 independent servers that together form the platform you know, releasing features like this requires a two-pronged approach: first we release code that supports processing and displaying this new format, and then release code that allows our users to actively use the feature. This ensures all of our users can see this new type of content before anyone can create it. As part of our 4.4 release, you will be able to see quotes from compatible Fediverse platforms (including future Mastodon releases), but you will not yet be able to quote posts yourself. That capability will come in 4.5.
Looking ahead
We’re really happy that this is the first version released by our expanded team as a whole! We have some exciting plans, and will get moving towards version 4.5 right away.
Key items for the next few months include: enabling anyone to create Quote Posts; some new features for organisations that run their own servers (for example, greater instance customisation); and, the ability to fetch replies to posts from many different instances, to improve the ability to follow conversations that include people your server is not yet aware of.
We plan to have 4.5 ready for everyone later in the year, and we have a lot of other exciting things to work on once the next release is ready. Stay tuned!
Support Mastodon
Thank you to everyone that contributed to this release, including our team, our community, and the many contributors from across the Fediverse. We’re excited to continue building Mastodon together with you.
We’re going through a formal process of setting up a new European non-profit organisation so that Mastodon remains free, open, and not owned by any single individual (more updates on our progress, very soon).
We depend on your support as we build, support, and advocate for decentralised and non-commercial social media.
We don’t take venture capital, we don’t sell ads, and we don’t sell your data - unlike many other platforms out there.
Please support our mission, so that we can continue to make Mastodon better.
Thank you for supporting Mastodon
We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.
Original source - May 2026
- No date parsed from source.
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Mastodon 4.3
Mastodon releases 4.3 with better notifications, refreshed design, improved onboarding, and new ways to surface writers and journalists across the fediverse. The stable update also brings smarter follow recommendations, cleaner embeds, and a more polished web app experience.
Mastodon 4.3 just landed! If you’re a mastodon.social user, you might have already seen some of this in action as we’ve been gradually rolling out these updates over the course of the last 11 months in nightly releases, but we’re finally making a new stable release available to the community. If you use a different server, you will get access to these improvements once your server operator upgrades.
Notifications
On Mastodon, your experience depends a lot on the moderation style of the server that hosts your account, but your unique ability to choose a server that suits your needs the best is useless if you don’t have much insight into how moderation decisions impact you. If a moderator decision results in you losing followers, or no longer being able to follow people from another server, you will now be notified and have the ability to export a list of the affected profiles.
Also, if a moderator decision targets your account specifically, you will now receive an in-app notification so you can’t miss it.
We’re also bringing two new major features to help people deal with unwanted attention. Notification grouping has arrived in Mastodon, allowing you to make sense of your notifications even if your posts are going viral. Instead of inundating your screen with hundreds of individual notifications for the same post, you’ll see a summary of how many people boosted or favourited it.
We’re also introducing a brand new system for filtering unwanted notifications. You get to decide what happens to notifications from people you don’t follow, who aren’t following you, recently created accounts, or unsolicited private mentions. You can either send them to the void immediately, never to be seen again, or put them into a special inbox you can peruse when you want.
Design
One of the ongoing efforts is to make Mastodon easy and delightful to use. We’ve invested a significant amount of money and time into working with professional designers and performing user testing over the last few years, but we really ramped up our efforts in 2023. Mastodon is quite a large application, and our resources remain very constrained compared to our corporate competitors, but we’ve made significant progress on improving the look and feel of Mastodon across the board.
We have redesigned the new post composer to be much more intuitive to use, to make sure you get your post right the first time. Not only does it look better, but you can now re-arrange media you’ve uploaded as you see fit, and see exactly what layout it will be displayed in. We’ve also made content warnings and word filters easier to notice and expand.
Across the web app, our iconography and color palette got a refresh, link previews look even better, and you can now hover over anyone’s name to peek at their profile and quickly follow or unfollow them. We also redesigned all of the “utility” emails (password resets, follow notifications, etc.) as well as the first welcome email to help you identify what’s most important.
Among various redesigned dialogs, new confirmation dialogs for muting and blocking describe exactly what effects muting and blocking will have. If you are about to block another server, we’ll show you exactly how many followers you would lose to help avoid potential mistakes. In the spirit of surfacing product education in more areas, clicking the domain on someone’s profile now brings up information about Mastodon’s decentralized nature.
Onboarding and discovery
Helping new users get started on Mastodon has been a key focus for us over the past few years. We found that people would skip follow recommendations during onboarding and end up with a boring feed that doesn’t offer anything new for hours or days.
We value the user’s agency over what is shown in the home feed, and pride ourselves on being a reliable platform to keep up with the people you care about without opaque algorithms randomizing which things you see in which order. This presents a challenge when other platforms have created an expectation that the user only has to passively consume what is generated for them instead of actively curating what they want to see.
On Mastodon, you need to follow people or hashtags to see them in your home feed. To bridge the gap for people who fly past the onboarding, we’ve introduced a little carousel with follow recommendations that will appear above the first post older than four hours on the first page of your home feed.
We’ve also significantly improved the system of follow recommendations as a whole, mixing generalized results like profiles popular in your language with personalized ones like profiles that a lot of the people you follow, follow. For added transparency, the reason for the recommendation is displayed along with it.
Helping writers and journalists
In this version we’re introducing a new way to highlight writers and journalists on the fediverse. By adding a single line to their HTML, publishers can feature the fediverse profile of the page author in the link previews on Mastodon. That way, when lots of different people are sharing the link, or the link is trending in the News tab, you can easily navigate to the author’s fediverse profile and follow them right from within Mastodon to receive future updates. Publications like The Verge and TechCrunch are already using this.
We’ve also put a fresh coat of paint on our website embeds. You’ve always been able to embed a Mastodon post on your own website, but we’ve made them look a lot better and gave them a more graceful fallback when the source is slow to load or no longer available. Of course, the dialog for embedding a post now looks a lot better as well, offering a simple click to copy button. Keep in mind that you can only embed posts that are public!
What’s next?
Now that 4.3 is done, our focus for the next release will be on implementing the highly requested features of quote posts, as well as the ability for server operators to subscribe to managed blocklists, which along with our new initiative of pluggable fediverse discovery providers should make running small and medium-sized fediverse servers much more viable; and with Ghost entering the fediverse, further improving how long-form content from other fediverse platforms is displayed within Mastodon.
We are extremely grateful to everyone who supports Mastodon through Patreon, our 501(c)3 in the US, and other means. Unlike our competitors, we don’t take venture capital, don’t sell ads and don’t sell your data. While other social media platforms have teams of hundreds of engineers working on them, we operate on less than 500K USD annually with a team of only 4 full-time employees, and a number of contractors. If you’d like to see the pace of development increase, please consider chipping in so we can hire more people!
Thank you for supporting Mastodon
We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.
In other news
The Mastodon stuffed toy is almost ready to go on sale. We’re waiting for the shipments to arrive at the warehouse. Find out more in the original announcement.
Original source - May 9, 2026
- Date parsed from source:May 9, 2026
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Mastodon 4.6: Collections Feature Launch
Mastodon introduces Collections in 4.6, a new way to curate and share recommended accounts for easier Fediverse discovery. The first version focuses on creation, privacy controls, and small public or unlisted collections, with search, broader discovery, and follow-all options coming later.
People come to the Fediverse to connect with others around communities and topics of interest. We’ve seen people enjoy their time on Mastodon the most, when they can follow and engage with individuals and organisations that have interesting things to share. We want to help those who are new to the Fediverse discover these communities more easily.
Back in October 2025, we shared our initial ideas about a new feature that’s coming in Mastodon 4.6, that we’re calling Collections. Collections are a way for people on Mastodon to curate and share bundles of accounts that they’d recommend to others - helping to grow these connections more quickly, instead of newcomers hunting around for the accounts they might be interested in.
The team has been working hard on the feature since then, and in this post we’re providing an update on what you’ll see when Collections start to appear in the next few weeks. Importantly, this is just the beginning for Collections! Think of this as the “version 1” release for feedback - we’re taking a slow and intentional approach to building them out.
We want to give a shout-out to some of the other great resources that help people to navigate and discover new content across the Fediverse - for example, fedi.tips and their @FediFollows account, the starter packs from fedidevs.com, and more. There’s room for all of these to offer alternative discovery options, and we appreciate the community initiatives; we hope Collections will be a useful addition.
Our approach
We had three primary inputs that shaped our thinking as we designed Collections.
Learning from Bluesky
We reviewed public feedback around Bluesky’s Starter Packs to inform our approach before building this feature. The biggest influence this had on us, was that we knew that we needed to have a way to for people to review Collections they are added to, and to remove themselves without having to resort to blocking or reporting.
We made the decision early on that people are not automatically included in their own collections. Curators can add themselves, but it’s not a requirement. This also influenced our choice for smaller Collection sizes, at least at the start - we may revisit this later.
Learning from the Mastodon community
We wanted to understand what information would be most helpful for people in deciding whether to follow accounts within a collection. Accounts currently display in list form, and we can’t show the entire profile - trade-offs must be made.
To understand what information to prioritise, we distributed a survey to people on Mastodon in late 2025. We found, unsurprisingly, that an account’s posts and bio text both have a huge influence on trust and interest. Additionally, being aware of mutuals (e.g. “people I follow who are following this account”) scored high on both points. Interestingly, recency of the account’s last post scored higher than the presence of a verified link, follower count, post count, and several other factors in influencing following behaviour (these findings also informed the redesign of Profiles). This study was conducted with limited resources - while not statistically significant, it offered us a starting point in understanding how Collections would be best represented.
Technical constraints
Technical challenges limit our ability to show posts within a Collection for v1, but we’d like to explore this as the feature matures.
Collections are similar to our existing Lists feature, in that they’re account-based. Many people asked for public, shareable lists, but we don’t currently have the infrastructure to build something of that scale. However, we plan to reduce confusion through naming and navigational updates in a future release of Mastodon.
Collections: What’s included in 4.6
We’re moving intentionally with this feature, using the 4.6 launch as an opportunity to learn more from the community. As such, we’ve taken a lightweight approach.
Creation
People with accounts on participating servers will be able to create Collections. Collections may include a short description and topic – a single hashtag to aid in discovery. Additionally, Collections may be marked as sensitive (this setting hides the description and accounts behind a content warning).
Sharing and discovery
Collections can be set to either Public or Unlisted, and shared via a link.
There’s a caveat here - the initial launch focuses on creation, with search and discovery coming soon. There are three reasons we’re doing this:
The number of community-created Collections needs to hit a critical mass before certain discovery experiences become impactful. For example, we’d like server owners to be able to recommend Collections to follow during onboarding (this would be a replacement for the current Recommended Accounts feature).
We’d like to observe how the community creates and shares Collections first; this will help us to understand how and where to showcase public Collections.
Implementing Collections in search and discovery is technically expensive.
This means that Public and Unlisted Collections will function very similarly at first, except that public Collections are also included in the curator’s Featured tab on their profile.
Privacy and moderation
You can opt out of having your account be eligible for inclusion in Collections by disabling the existing “Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithms” account setting.
If you are opted into discovery, you will be notified when another account adds you to a Collection. From there, you can view the contents of the Collection, and remove your account if desired.
In cases of potential harassment, you are encouraged to report or block the other account. Reporting a Collection allows a decision to be made by server moderators; blocking removes you from any collections curated by the blocked account, and prevents the blocked account from adding your account to future Collections.
What’s not in the initial release
Super large Collections
In this release, Collections can include up to 25 accounts.
Collections on Mastodon will continue to focus on quality over quantity. We suspect that smaller Collections will cut down on the type of spammy behaviour that was sometimes seen on Bluesky (where there is a limit of 150 accounts on Starter Packs). However, we don’t know exactly what the magic number is; we’ve talked to several industry leaders, and suspect the number is between 25 and 80. This is still a wide range, and we’re starting on the lower end because it’s far easier from a technical perspective to increase this limit later, than it is to reduce it.
Find yourself maxing out a Collection and then creating a “Volume 2”? Send us your Collection, if you want; or, tell us about it, so we can understand your use case.
A ‘Follow All’ button
We’re not including a bulk follow action on day one.
This is something we’re considering, but we want to approach it with care. We read feedback that people on Bluesky often found themselves mass following accounts from stale Starter Packs, only to have a subpar feed afterwards.
We also recognise that there are scenarios that require more thought. For example, imagine you follow all accounts in a Collection, but then, some of the accounts are removed from the Collection. Do you expect to be able to bulk unfollow all of the accounts you previously followed from that Collection, even if they no longer exist there? Many people look to Mastodon to be the straightforward and authentic platform, so including a bulk follow action without an “escape hatch” is a dark pattern that we wish to avoid.
In short, we’re open to this in the future, but we’d like to understand the demand first. We hope to hear from the community about the experience of using “Collections v1”, and we may add a ‘Follow All’ button, potentially with proper undo controls, if there’s strong demand for reducing friction in the experience.
Availability
We’ll be enabling Collections on mastodon.social in the coming week. As usual, we take a moment to test out these features on our own servers ahead of a release. This initial release of Collections will become generally available for all Mastodon servers as part of Mastodon 4.6, coming in a few weeks.
note: we plan to add more screenshots to this post soon
Open to feedback
We’re focused on user privacy, and this means that we have very limited analytics to inform decisions. We also believe in community-driven design, and we want to be transparent about our thinking as we build new features. Our small team is counting on the insights from your experiences as you create, use, and test Collections! If you have things you’d like to let us know related to these updates, contact us at [email protected]. We might not be able to respond individually, but rest assured that we’ll be reading every piece of feedback.
Thanks
We are grateful to GCC for a grant that supported the development of this feature.
Original source - May 7, 2026
- Date parsed from source:May 7, 2026
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
Changelog - May 7, 2026
Reddit adds emoji shortcodes on web, updates iOS with Liquid Glass and a moved Create button, and rolls out mod tools improvements like post and comment guidance updates, new navigation, and bug fixes across platforms.
Redditor Updates
Easily add emojis to your posts and comments on web
What’s changing?
You now have the ability to add emojis to posts and comments through emoji short codes on desktop. Type a colon followed by the word to describe your emoji (e.g., :smile) or directly type the emoticon (e.g., :;), and you will see a predictive emoji menu populate as you type. The predictive emoji menu currently only supports English shortcode matching.
When is this change happening?
This change is live on desktop.
Deprecation of composer markdown shortcuts
What’s changing?
Previously, we supported markdown formatting (e.g.: text = text) on post and comment composer on native mobile apps. As part of a broader initiative to improve technical performance, we no longer support markdown formatting in post composer for iOS or Android. We’ll also begin to deprecate markdown formatting on iOS and Android comment composer soon.
You’ll now be able to manage most formatting functionality via the rich-text toolbar, with the exception of block quotes (>) and numbered/bulleted lists, which we plan to add support for via the rich-text toolbar in the future.
When is this change happening?
This change started on May 4, 2026 for iOS and Android.
Evolving Reddit’s iOS UI with Liquid Glass
What’s changing?
We’re evolving the Reddit iOS interface with Liquid Glass, a design overhaul crafted to feel more native, fluid, and immersive. This update ensures Reddit feels more at home within Apple’s latest design language, prioritizing depth, clarity, and a seamless user experience.
What to look for:
- Modern aesthetic: A lighter, more breathable visual treatment that prioritizes your content.
- Intuitive navigation: Key controls now transition into persistent buttons, ensuring your tools are always within reach without cluttering the screen.
- Layered depth: We’ve refined spacing, added transparency, and smoothed out motion for a more tactile feel.
When is this change happening?
Liquid Glass begins rolling out to redditors on iOS 26+ starting the week of May 18, 2026.
Relocation of the Create button for iOS redditors
What’s changing?
We relocated the Create button (image) from the bottom navigation bar to the top navigation bar (top right-hand corner). This shift is designed to align with Apple’s latest ergonomic standards, ensuring that sharing your next post feels like a seamless extension of the community you’re currently exploring.
What to look for:
- Improved contextual intent: Easily post to the community you’re currently viewing with a more logical, header-based placement.
- Persistent visibility: For redditors on iOS 26+, the Create button will stay anchored and accessible at the top of your screen without cluttering your feed.
When is this change happening?
Relocation of the Create button for iOS is now live, but the persistent visibility will roll out the week of May 18, 2026. While this is iOS specific today, Android will be updated soon.
Testing design updates to the crossposting experience
What’s changing?
Starting this week, we’ll begin testing a series of design updates to the crossposting experience, including refreshed action bars on mobile web, updated naming and icons (image), and the removal of duplicate titles on iOS, Android, and desktop.
When is this change happening?
Testing will begin this week and continue through the end of the month.
Moderator Updates
Keeping SFW communities SFW
What’s changing?
Last month, we launched a new safety filter, the adult content promoter filter. The name is pretty self-explanatory, but it can help keep SFW communities free from unwanted or stealthy adult content promotion by identifying redditors who promote adult content anywhere on Reddit and filtering their content for your review (or removing it altogether).
To try it out, go to Safety Filters in your Mod Tools to turn the filter on and configure it based on your community’s comfort and norms. You’ll be able to customize the filter’s settings to include posts and/or comments and choose between Moderate and High filtering.
Last week, we also included the capability of the filter to exempt approved users. That means anyone you’ve added as an approved user will not be caught by this filter.
When is this change happening?
The filter launched in early April on all platforms and the ability to exempt approved users was added on April 30.
Post and comment guidance updates
What’s changing?
We’re adding a couple of new capabilities to both post and comment guidance to give mods more control over how they alert redditors to posting requirements before content is submitted.
New additions include:
- Post flair support: Trigger guidance based on selected post flair, helping mods guide redditors based on the type of post they’re creating.
- Comment-level distinctions: Differentiate between parent comments and replies, so mods can tailor guidance to different types of conversations.
When is this change happening?
These feature enhancements will start to roll out across all platforms in the coming weeks.
New mod tools navigation and interface
What’s changing?
We’re updating how you access and move between mod tools to make features easier to find and faster to use.
You’ll see:
- A single, more consistent entry point for mod tools.
- A streamlined menu that makes it easier to jump between key surfaces.
- Search built directly into the experience so you can quickly find what you need.
- Easier switching between communities while moderating.
When is this change happening?
This update will start to roll out across all platforms in the coming weeks.
Bug Fixes
Bug: [All Platforms] The moderator list within certain subreddits was displaying a “Wow, so much empty” error.
The fix: When accessing the moderators list within mod tools, the page will display all moderators as intended.
Bug: [All Platforms] Username mentions were not working for usernames ending in a hyphen.
The fix: Usernames that include a hyphen can now be mentioned as expected.
Bug: [Android] The profile share link was missing a “/” after reddit.com when copied from the profile page.
The fix: Profile share links are now formatted correctly.
Bug: [Android] The default reply mode on the mod mail reply screen was not defaulting to "Reply as subreddit".
The fix: The default reply mode has been fixed to default as the subreddit on the mod mail reply screen.
Bug: [Android] Moderators were seeing a delay when attempting to access mod notes or the user mod log.
The fix: Mod notes and the user mod log now load without the previous delay for moderators.
Bug: [iOS] Post history on some user profiles did not load unless the user switched to the comments tab first.
The fix: When visiting the profile posts tab first, user post history now loads as expected.
Bug: [iOS] Certain top bar buttons were not functional in some cases on newly loaded user profiles.
The fix: Redditors can now access top bar buttons on user profile pages as expected.
Bug: [iOS] The comment composer was overlapping with the final comment in some posts.
The fix: The bottom-most comment will now fully display.
Bug: [Web] Some moderators were unable to adjust ban length from the restricted users page on www.reddit.com.
The fix: Moderators can now adjust ban length as expected from Mod Tools > Restricted Users page.
Note: This is not a complete list of all recent bug fixes. If you’d like to report a new or persistent bug, head over to r/bugs.
If a bug listed here is not yet fixed for you, please ensure that you’re updated to the most recent Android or iOS app version, or refresh your browser.
Original source - Apr 22, 2026
- Date parsed from source:Apr 22, 2026
- First seen by Releasebot:May 13, 2026
Introducing Place Loyalty on Snap Map
Snapchat launches Place Loyalty on Snap Map, a new way to celebrate the places you visit most often with Gold, Silver, and Bronze rankings, a Top Visitor badge, and shareable stickers. The feature is visible only to you and keeps location sharing under your control.
Introducing Place Loyalty on Snap Map
Celebrate the places you love most – and see how your visits stack up
We all have them: The coffee shop that knows your order, the go-to restaurant you always suggest, the airport you practically live in. The places we visit most become part of our routines and part of who we are. Now, Snap Map reflects that. Today, we’re launching Place Loyalty, a new way to celebrate the spots you visit most often for our global community.
Place Loyalty highlights when you’re among the most frequent visitors to a place on Snap Map over the past year. Loyalty is determined by visits, and if you’re in the top 25% of Snapchatters who visit that place, you’ll see your ranking:
- 🥇Gold – Top 1%
- 🥈Silver – Top 10%
- 🥉Bronze – Top 25%
Are you a Gold-tier regular at your local café? A Silver-level airport pro? Now you’ll know.
As you explore your Snap Map, you may spot a "Top Visitor" badge directly on a location. Tap on the badge to see your loyalty brought to life, complete with category callouts and a shareable sticker showcasing your status. And for brands and chains, we aggregate your visits across all locations, so all of your visits to your favorite spots really count.
Snap Map has grown into one of the most used maps on mobile, with more than 435 million monthly active users connecting with friends and exploring what’s happening around them. From checking where friends are hanging out to discovering popular local spots, Snap Map plays a meaningful role in how our community experiences the world together — making features like Place Loyalty a natural extension of how people already use the map every day.
Your location on Snap Map is off by default and only shared with the friends you choose to share it with. Place Loyalty rankings are visible only to you, and your precise location is never shared with advertisers. You’re always in control — whether that means selecting specific friends, enabling Ghost Mode, or turning off location sharing altogether.
At Snapchat, we know that the best places aren’t just the ones we love — they’re the ones we go to with friends. To celebrate the launch, we’re also sharing the top local hotspots in New York and Los Angeles that are most popular for Snapchatters to visit with a friend:
Happy Snapping!
Get In Touch
For press requests, e
Original source
mail [email protected].
For all other inquiries, please visit our Support site. - Apr 15, 2026
- Date parsed from source:Apr 15, 2026
- First seen by Releasebot:May 9, 2026
v4.5.9
Mastodon releases v4.5.9 with a security fix for insufficient email address verification, updated dependencies, and bug fixes for quote handling, quote update notifications, and the JSON-LD quote definition, plus a new trademark warning in mastodon:setup.
Upgrade overview
This release contains upgrade notes that deviate from the norm:
ℹ️ Requires assets recompilation
For more information, view the complete release notes and scroll down to the upgrade instructions section.
Changelog
Security
Insufficient verification of email addresses (GHSA-5r37-qpwq-2jhh)
Updated dependencies
AddedAdd trademark warning to mastodon:setup task (#38548 by @ClearlyClaire)
FixedFix definition for quote in JSON-LD context (#38686 by @ClearlyClaire)
Fix being unable to disable sound for quote update notification (#38537 by @ClearlyClaire)
Fix being able to quote someone you blocked (#38608 by @ClearlyClaire)
Upgrade notes
To get the code for v4.5.9, use git fetch && git checkout v4.5.9.
Note
As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump
Dependencies
External dependencies have not changed since v4.5.0.
Ruby: 3.2 or newer
PostgreSQL: 14 or newer
Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)
LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer
Redis: 7.0 or newer
Node: 20.19 or newer
libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer
ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer
Update steps
The following instructions are for updating from 4.5.8.
If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.5.0 release notes.
Non-Docker
Tip
The charlock_holmes gem may fail to build on some systems with recent versions of gcc.
If you run into this issue, try BUNDLE_BUILD__CHARLOCK_HOLMES="--with-cxxflags=-std=c++17" bundle install.
Install dependencies with bundle install and yarn install --immutable
Precompile the assets: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile
Restart all Mastodon processes.
When using Docker
Restart all Mastodon processes.
Original source