Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is among those who have joined the board of Mastodon’s new U.S. nonprofit, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced over the weekend. Mastodon’s service, a decentralized open source social network and competitor to Elon Musk’s
Mastodon only somewhat meets these requirements. Although the service is similar to Twitter in many ways, it is based on a different infrastructure. As part of the “Fediverse” – or the open social web made up of interconnected servers that communicate via the ActivityPub protocol – Mastodon benefits users who no longer want to be tied to a centralized social network bought to new billionaire owners and can be sold. like Musk.
Although Mastodon was founded as a nonprofit in Germany in 2021, establishing a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States will allow the company to receive tax-deductible donations and other financial support. The change also comes as Mastodon has inexplicably lost its non-profit status in Germany.
“…we received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status was withdrawn,” Rochko wrote on the Mastodon blog. “This happened without warning or explanation. Earlier this year we went through a successful tax audit which actually resulted in some positive adjustments as we overpaid taxes. Our tax advisor immediately appealed the decision, but so far we have no new information,” he said.
Mastodon’s day-to-day operations were unaffected by this change, as the majority of its revenue comes from the crowdfunding platform Patreon. The company also received donations of $100,000 each from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla, allowing the company to hire a third full-time developer this year.
However, being incorporated as a non-profit organization allows Mastodon to communicate how it is different from other social media companies. Even if Mastodon regains its non-profit status in the US, the company wants to remain based outside the EU.
In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esra’a Al Shafei, a human rights activist and founder of Majal.org; Karien Bezuidenhout, openness advocate and experienced board member in sustainable social enterprises; Amir Ghavi, partner at law firm Fried Frank, where he is co-head of the Technology Transactions Practice; and Felix Hlatky, Chief Financial Officer of Mastodon since 2020, who originally founded the project as a non-profit LLC in Germany and helped it raise additional funding.