Mastodon is arguably the best free and open-source social media platform, using the same shared (federated) network as Flipboard, Meta’s Threads, and other platforms. Mastodon 4.3 is now rolling out to servers with some fantastic improvements.
Mastodon 4.3 improves account notifications with grouping, where duplicate notifications about the same posts are combined for easier viewing. For example, instead of seeing eight individual messages about people liking a post, they would be combined into one message in the notifications pane. This is already common on other platforms, so it’s great to see Mastodon catch up.
The Mastodon web app has also received some design updates. You can now rearrange images in the post composer, and content warnings and word filters are easier to notice and expand. Many icons, colors, and email templates have been updated. You can also now filter notifications based on individual users. Some links to articles now show the author’s Mastodon username (if the author has one and the article’s site supports the feature), and Mastodon post embeds have been improved.
The blog post for the update explains, “We value the user’s agency over what is shown in the home feed, and pride ourselves on being a reliable platform to keep up with the people you care about without opaque algorithms randomizing which things you see in which order. This presents a challenge when other platforms have created an expectation that the user only has to passively consume what is generated for them instead of actively curating what they want to see.”
Unfortunately, Mastodon is still missing many frequently-requested features, which has likely contributed to the rise of Bluesky and other Twitter/X alternatives. Quote posts/quote tweets are still not fully supported (that is coming in the next release, thankfully), as well as the ability to limit who can reply to public posts. You also still can’t bring your old posts with you when you move to another server—just your following and followers lists, as well account blocks and other settings.
Mastodon 4.3 is already live on the official mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers, and it’s slowly rolling out to other servers as administrators set it up. The official Mastodon apps are updated separately from server versions, and there are also dozens of third-party Mastodon clients you can try out. Ivory for iPhone and Mac is my personal favorite.
Source: Mastodon Blog
