Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon’s new US nonprofit
Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, is among those who have joined the board of directors of Mastodonās new U.S. nonprofit, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced over the weekend. Mastodonās service, an open source, decentralized social network and rival to Elon Muskās X, has gained increased attention following the Twitter acquisition as users sought alternatives to Xās would-be āeverything appā that felt more like the old Twitter of days past.
Mastodon only somewhat fits that bill. Though the service resembles Twitter in many ways, itās underpinned by different infrastructure. As part of the āfediverseā ā or the open social web made up of interconnected servers communicating over the ActivityPub protocol ā Mastodon benefits users who no longer want to be locked into a centralized social network that can be bought and sold to new billionaire owners, like Musk.
Though Mastodon was already established as a nonprofit in Germany in 2021, the creation of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the U.S. will allow the company to receive tax-deductible donations and other financial support. The change also comes as Mastodon has inexplicitly lost its nonprofit status in Germany.
āā¦we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn,ā wrote Rochko on the Mastodon blog. āThis came with no advance warning or explanation. Earlier this year we went through a successful tax audit, which in fact resulted in some favourable adjustments as weāve been paying too much tax. Our tax advisor immediately submitted an appeal to the decision, but so far, we have no new information,ā he said.
Mastodonās day-to-day operations were unaffected by this change, as most of its income comes from the crowdfunding platform Patreon. It also received donations from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla at $100,000 apiece, which allowed the company to hire a third full-time developer this year.
However, being established as a nonprofit enables Mastodon to communicate how it differs from other social media businesses. While becoming a nonprofit in the U.S. will help Mastodon regain its status, it wants to remain based out of the EU.
In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esraāa Al Shafei, a human rights advocate and founder of Majal.org; Karien Bezuidenhout, an advocate for openness and experienced board member across sustainable social enterprise; Amir Ghavi, a partner at law firm Fried Frank, where heās the co-head of the Technology Transactions Practice; and Felix Hlatky, the chief financial officer of Mastodon since 2020, who originally incorporated the project as a nonprofit LLC in Germany and helped it raise additional funds.