As part of the “fediverse” — or the open social web made up of interconnected servers communicating over the ActivityPub protocol — 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.

“…we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn,” wrote Rochko on the Mastodon blog.

Mastodon’s 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.

In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esra’a 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 he’s 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.

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