Announced the launch of the new version of the free platform for the deployment of decentralized social networks Mastodon 3.5, version in which some important changes are highlighted, such as the edition of publications, improvements for moderators and more.
For those unfamiliar with Mastodon, you should know that this is a free platform for the deployment of decentralized social networks, which allows you to create services in your own facilities that are not controlled by individual providers.
If the user cannot start their own node, they can choose a reliable public service to connect to. Mastodon belongs to the category of federated networks, in which the ActivityPub protocol suite is used to form a single structure of connections.
About Mastodon
Basically in a nutshell is a decentralized federation of servers running open source software. This means that users are spread out in different autonomous and independent communities called "instances" (servers) whose network is called fediverso (pun between federation and universe) but still unified through the possibility of interacting with each other.
Its use is free, users post statuses or "toots" of up to 500 characters, or multimedia content, also includes the use of tags and mentions to other users.
Note that the instances can be accessed by the general public or in a limited way according to particular criteria. Thus instances have been created by peculiar affinities such as artists, political fans, social events, or specific topics.
Mastodon is available for HTML5-compatible desktop and mobile web browsers.Graphically it is inspired by TweetDeck, with separate columns for the history of local and federated states. The federated history groups all the public states in the fediverse in a similar way to a social media aggregator.
Main novelties of Mastodon 3.5
In this new version it is highlighted that added the ability to be able to edit posts already sent, so from now on the original and edited versions of the posts are saved and remain available for analysis in the transaction history.
It is mentioned that the users who have shared a post with other members receive a notification when they make changes to the original post and can undistribute the message they shared. The feature is currently disabled by default in the web app and will be enabled once enough servers migrate to version 3.5.
Another change that stands out in this new version of Mastodon 3.5 is that the order of the attached files in a message no longer depends on the file upload order.
We can also find that added a new page with a selection of posts popular, trending hashtags, recommended followers and news posts shared by most members, with it now the collections are formed taking into account the user's language, in addition to all the materials included in the lists of posts that gain popularity they are manually moderated before being shown as recommendations.
Another novelty that stands out is that moderators are offered a new multi-stage process to review warnings of violations with the possibility of considering appeals.
All moderator actions, such as deleting a post or pausing posts, are now displayed in the user's settings and are by default accompanied by sending the offender an email notification, with the opportunity to contest the actions taken, even through personal correspondence with the moderator.
On the other hand, it is noted that a new summary page has been proposed with general metrics for moderators and additional statisticss, including data on where new users are coming from, what languages are spoken, and how many of them remain on the server afterwards. The complaints page has been updated to streamline alert handling and improve tools for mass removal of spam and bot activity.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it about this new released version, you can check the details In the following link.