Mastodon\u2019s creator, Eugen Rochko<\/a>, is stepping down as CEO of the open source, decentralized social network and X rival<\/a>, as part of the organization\u2019s transition to a non-profit structure, announced at the beginning of the year<\/a>. The change is Mastodon\u2019s most significant leadership overhaul to date, and one designed to ensure Mastodon\u2019s longevity. <\/p>\n As part of the organization\u2019s restructuring, Mastodon<\/a> will be governed by a board of directors, which today includes Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Karien Bezuidenhout, Esra\u2019a Al Shafei, Mastodon Community Director Hannah Aubry (who will be stepping down), and Felix Hlatky<\/a>, who will be taking the role of Executive Director. <\/p>\n With the revamp, Mastodon has the potential to expand its business, product, and mission, without being dependent on a single person\u2019s leadership. It will also give Rochko a break, as he\u2019s been singularly focused on Mastodon for the past ten years. <\/p>\n Going forward, Rochko will continue contributing to Mastodon as an advisor. Rochko has also been compensated with a one-time payment of \u20ac1 million, given that he took less than a fair market salary over the years while building Mastodon. <\/p>\n Other members of the new leadership team include Renaud Chaput as Technical Director, Andy Piper as Head of Communications, and Philip Schr\u00f6pel as Strategy & Product Advisor. In total, Mastodon has 10 full-time employees. <\/p>\n Rochko said he knew it was time to step aside as Mastodon had grown to be bigger than he could manage alone, and because he was also facing burnout. <\/p>\n \u201c[Mastodon has] become kind of synonymous with my identity. I can\u2019t look somewhere and see something about social media without thinking about how it affects my work,\u201d Rochko explained in an interview with TechCrunch. \u201cI want it to succeed. And it\u2019s led to a lot of stress, and obviously, it ultimately led to burnout,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that taking a step back, realizing this isn\u2019t just mine anymore \u2014 now other people are involved, other people are responsible for this \u2014 is going to allow me to restore some balance in my life.\u201d <\/p>\n He also suggested others should do the same if they are able. <\/p>\n \u201cI definitely think that investing all of your time in work is not healthy, because afterwards, you\u2019re going to be left with nothing,\u201d Rochko added. <\/p>\n That message stands in contradiction to the new work-till-you-drop ethos that has infused Silicon Valley in the AI era, where founders are embracing hustle culture<\/a> and even China\u2019s intense \u201c996\u201d work schedule<\/a> (working 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week).<\/p>\n As a non-profit, Mastodon will be able to unlock new funding opportunities, particularly in Europe, noted the new Executive Director, Hlatky. <\/p>\n The organization has already transitioned to a non-profit in the U.S. but is still working to set up a nonprofit in Belgium, or an AISBL<\/a>, to replace the German entity, which lost its non-profit status<\/a> last year. Once established, the Belgian nonprofit will be the future home of the organization. In the meantime, the U.S.-based 501(c)(3) c nonprofit will own the trademark and other assets.<\/p>\n To aid in the transition, Mastodon raised funds from Stack Exchange founder Jeff Atwood <\/a>and the Atwood family (who gave EUR 2.2 million); Biz Stone<\/a>; alternative app marketplace AltStore<\/a> (EUR 260K), the Global Chinese Community of Universal Digital Commons<\/a> (EUR 65K); and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark<\/a>. <\/p>\n Hlatky, who has a business and finance background<\/a> in tech, had been consulting pro bono for Mastodon ahead of this transition, having helped the organization establish its German nonprofit. <\/p>\n He says that through his work, he had become disenchanted with the typical startup system involving venture capital. <\/p>\n \u201cIt works for the outliers, but for all the others, it doesn\u2019t work,\u201d Hlatky said. \u201cI just got bored with the system, and I didn\u2019t really see any meaning in contributing to the system anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n In his new position, Hlatky will engage in more conversations with industry stakeholders and the media, and sees the opportunity to have politicians, political parties, and journalists engage more on the platform. <\/p>\n He will also help oversee projects to make Mastodon more financially sustainable, including its new hosting and moderation business<\/a>. Other members of the leadership team will also focus on trust and safety issues, technical infrastructure, and product. <\/p>\n One thing that Mastodon won\u2019t be focusing on is any sort of native interoperability between its platform, powered by the ActivityPub protocol and other decentralized social networks like Bluesky \u2014 which runs on the AT Protocol \u2014 or those running on nostr, a protocol favored by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Instead, Mastodon will leave interoperability to the makers of third-party projects like Bridgy Fed<\/a> and Bounce<\/a>. (These different protocols are essentially competing technical standards for how decentralized social networks communicate.)<\/p>\n By restructuring Mastodon, Rochko believes the organization will maintain its position as \u201cbillionaire-proof\u201d social media. That mission statement has also been adopted by Bluesky<\/a>, a network that has grown larger than Mastodon with 40 million registered users, compared with Mastodon\u2019s 10 million. On both networks, a smaller number of those users are active on a monthly basis. <\/p>\n On Mastodon, monthly active users have since dropped to under 1 million, after the 2022 spike that came following<\/a> Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition of Twitter.<\/a> Before the deal closed, Mastodon had only around 200,000 monthly active users, Rochko noted; after, it jumped to 2 million.<\/p>\n That, he believes, indicates demand for a platform not controlled by a billionaire. <\/p>\n \u201cThreads, Instagram, and Facebook belong to a billionaire. X belongs to a billionaire\u2026All of these platforms belong to extremely rich people, and they\u2019re increasingly using these platforms to steer public perception, public conversation, and politics,\u201d he noted. \u201cAnd Mastodon is one of the very few \u2014 if not the only \u2014 of these organizations and social media platforms \u2014 and the fediverse as a whole, I suppose \u2014 that is not subject to something like that,\u201d Rochko said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nCEO says burnout was a factor in his decision<\/h2>\n
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What\u2019s next: the non-profit transition<\/h2>\n
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