Mastodon is not a single website, it is made up of thousands of independent servers called Instances. Every Instance has its own independent server, homepage, community, and rules, and it’s administered and moderated by different people. Users can join any public Instance, interact with users across other Instances and change/migrate between Instances. For a list of public Mastodon Instances, visit: https://joinmastodon.org/servers
Below is a screenshot of a sample posts from Mastodon, followed by a list of data points available in a Mastodon dataset, as provided by Mastodon API: #
Screenshot Label | Field | Description | Sample Post | Sample Reply |
---|---|---|---|---|
* | id | Unique identifier for the post | 111980891057019506 | 111914622999273339 |
1 | date | Date when the post was created | 2024-02-23T12:53:09.000Z | 2024-02-11T20:00:24.000Z |
2 | author | Poster’s unique username | Free_Press | freemo |
3 | account_address | Unique address made up of a poster’s username and the Mastodon server where their account was created | [email protected] | [email protected] |
* | followers_count | The number of accounts following a user | 8337 | 32602 |
* | following_count | The number of accounts a user is following | 7313 | 787 |
4 | text | The main body of the post | Hundreds of empty chairs were removed before Donald Trump’s speech at a convention of religious broadcasters in Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday #AureFreePress #News #press #headline #GOP #Politics newsweek.com/donald-trump-rall | [@freakwate](https://twit.social/@freakwater) Is that post even real? I cant even tell anymore. |
* | parent_post_id | The id of the parent post that started a thread. If this field is populated, this post is a reply. | 111914513806105426 | |
* | in_reply_to_id | The id of the post that this post is directly replying to. This can be a parent post or another post in a thread started by the parent post. If this field is populated, the post is a reply. | 111914513806105426 | |
* | in_reply_to_account_address | The account address a user is directly replying to. If this field is populated, the post is a reply. | [email protected] | |
* | language | The language used in the post text, as provided by the API. | en | en |
* | permalink | A persistent URL to the post | https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/111980891057019506 | https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/111914622999273339 |
5 | favorites_count | The number of favourites/likes a post received | 12 | 0 |
* | replies_count | The number of replies a post received | 1 | 0 |
6 | reblogs_count | The number of reposts, aka “boosts” or “reblog”, a post received | 9 | 0 |
*Not displayed in the screenshot |