# Mastodon 273 Hacker News commenters recommended Mastodon and 220 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (12 owners). **Verdict:** An open-source, federated Twitter alternative with chronological feeds, no ads and calmer communities; critics cite confusing server choice, fragmented conversations and poor account portability. ## Why people recommend it - Decentralized, no single owner (6 comments): "Well Mastodon would make the most sense. They can run their own server with their own moderation policies while still federating with the broader network." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703856)) "Mastodon is a success because it hosts a community and because it represents a validation of the model of decentralized federated social media." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748897)) "the most intellectually consistent and sincere adherence to FOSS, privacy, and decentralization of any major social media project" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45973785)) - Chronological feed, no algorithm (3 comments): "I tend to use Mastodon which makes finding a post's popularity a click away, and so emphasises posting for interest instead of outrage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582199)) "You friend people and what you get is a cronological feed. No algorithm bullshit, no gamification, no adverts snuck in." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48452461)) "The former simply won't show you anything you didn't explicitly subscribe to, and there's no hidden ranking system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48110925)) - Calmer, genuine communities (6 comments): "Mastodon seems to solve the problems for those that use it. It's a genuine social network that people use to talk to each other and form real communites." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447102)) "I feel Mastodon is a nicer place these days because the worst tranche of Mastodonsters seemed to have migrated to Bluesky." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479989)) "The folks in it for the love of the game, not because it pays well or because they're chasing the latest trends." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50125530)) - Open source, no ads (4 comments): "Personally I think it's pretty amazing that an open source project, with no VC money or marketing department or big corporate tie in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748938)) "Wikipedia and Mastodon have their problems, but at least there's not an obvious need for them to exploit their users to make money." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46331795)) "the most intellectually consistent and sincere adherence to FOSS, privacy, and decentralization of any major social media project" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45973785)) ## What people warn about - Choosing an instance is confusing (3 comments): "Nobody wants to waste their time host your own, moving from a rouge instance, trying to search for users to follow and the worst one: Choosing which instance to sign up to." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585399)) "The TL;DR of the problem with Mastodon is that you basically need to pin your identity to what is essentially a small internet community/forum" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954095)) "the first thing the fediverse sites like mastodon or Lemmy try to do when you search for them on Google is get you into a server" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444301)) - Moving servers loses posts (2 comments): "Your instance shuts down? All your posts are gone. I naively assumed I could just move them to a new instance and found out the hard way." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516517)) "mastodon is too slow/heavy and has a mod problem that is intolerable without a better story about user mobility between servers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49272837)) - Broken, fragmented conversations (2 comments): "Conversations are simply broken. If you communicate at all in a decentralized way, you will interact with threads where you do not see whole branches of the conversation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48885827)) "Masto specifically is also a Twitter not Facebook replacement, with everyone soliloquizing past each other rather than holding a genuine conversation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47113133)) - Still has ragebait and noise (2 comments): "This is already a problem with things like Mastodon - as soon as you subscribe to some more "spammy" accounts such as news outlets, all the other content is drowned out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307194)) "my time with Mastodon has revealed that even decentralized networks are just as full of outrage-centric entertainment and ragebait as the main networks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46407427)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Bluesky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bluesky.md): 317 recommend - [Facebook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/facebook.md): 289 recommend - [X (formerly Twitter)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/x.md): 264 recommend - [Instagram](https://hackerapproved.com/p/instagram.md): 212 recommend - [TikTok](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tiktok.md): 130 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Mastodon", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mastodon/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).