Let’s just ignore all the other clients that are already in there
Unless you are a trendsetter on social media. When chasing alternatives to the giants of Internet interactivity, you may not know Mastodon, the semi-popular microblogging alternative to Twitter, first launched in 2016. While Twitter is a centralized ivory tower that can ban a whim and is subject to hostile takeover attempts From eccentric billionaires, Mastodon is built solely on open source software and consists of independent, user-managed servers capable of interoperating with each other. Despite being more than half a decade old, Mastodon had not yet released an app for another open source platform – Android. Fortunately, that has finally changed.
Due to its open source nature, this is not the first app to let you use its network, but it is the first official client released by the Mastodon team (via XDA Developers). While this social network does not have the 200 million user base that Twitter has, the fact that it is open source means that you do not have to worry about a growing plague of ads, and your feed will always remain in chronological order. It also comes at a strong time for Mastodon. Following Elon Musk’s first investment in Twitter, Mastodon saw an increase in the number of new users that is likely to grow only now that it is officially available to billions of Android users worldwide.
However, this app misses a few features included by other third-party clients. While notifications, search, and communities are here, you can not see local or federated timelines. Still, if a missing first-party app has deterred you from trying Mastodon and you want to give it a spin, the app is free in the Play Store and runs on Android 6.0 and later.
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