Eugen is tired. The 29-year-old German is the founder of Mastodon, which has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as the ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users.
After leaving university, Rochko started working on Mastodon. He wanted to create a platform that wasn't controlled by a single company or person because online communication is too important to be messed with. He believed that the lack of profit motive and canny design could help users.
The Mastodon protocol allows anyone to use open-source software to host a community with its own rules. TheFediverse is a collective of communities that are linked together. People can join a server that matches their interests, but also connect with other users on other server, or block all content from a particular server completely.
The first code was popular with free software enthusiasts. Musk took control of the social networking site. Many dedicated users of the platform were turned off by his promises to weaken moderation and deep staff cuts. In the past few weeks, hundreds of thousands of new Mastodon accounts have been created, overwhelming popular server and flooding users timelines with questions and complaints from new users. The nonprofit that runs Mastodon and where Rochko is CEO spent less money last year than the previous one.
He has been working long hours to keep his own server, Mastodon.Social, running, while also preparing a major upgrade to Mastodon, but he took time to videochat with WIRED from his home in Germany. The conversation has been edited to make it clearer.
Will Knight, what have the last few weeks been like?
People want to hear that it's been great, but I don't want to be a part of it. There are more fires to extinguish. It's a lot of work. I pull 14-hour workdays, sleep very little, and eat very little.
The release of a new version of Mastodon coincides with the story. You have to pay attention to that. You have to respond to press inquiries and run social media accounts to take advantage of the opportunity.
It's gratifying to see that people are turning away from social media.
It was enjoyable at an objective level. I would like to lean back and enjoy the fact that Stephen Fry is using Mastodon. I don't have time to appreciate that. It has been an unprecedented increase in funds because of all the new donations.
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