Mastodon now has a button for sharing content from other websites

2 hours ago 27

Stevie Bonifield

is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.

Sharing content to Mastodon is getting easier with the addition of a universal “Share to Mastodon” button for the decentralized social media platform. Announced on Monday, the widget allows users to share content on any Mastodon server by connecting your Mastodon account and redirecting you to the server that account is on. The blog post announcing the feature also explains that the tool “works entirely in your browser: there is no tracking data, and it does not store any information on the server.”

Previously, a “share” widget wasn’t available on Mastodon mainly due to the technical challenges that come with the platform’s decentralized design. As Mastodon’s blog post says, “The distributed nature of the network is the greatest strength of Mastodon, but it also means that having a share button that takes you to the ‘correct’ Mastodon server for your account is a lot more involved than a simple hyperlink.” While third party solutions existed, the blog notes that none had become ubiquitous, or easy to find.

After Monday’s update, website owners can now add the new “share” button to their pages. The widget’s open-source code is also freely available so anyone can view it or even use it to host their own version of the button. Mastodon also recently added a feature that helps new users find relevant servers to join and introduced “packs” for helping users find accounts to follow.

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