PC Mag

Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko will now be its chief product strategist.

Decentralized social media platform Mastodon will transfer its ownership to a nonprofit entity in Europe, which will own the company and its key assets.

“We are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new nonprofit organization,” Mastodon said in a blog post, “affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”

Mastodon was founded by Eugen Rochko in 2016 with the goal of helping users “control their social circle online, curate their own timeline, and convene freely with any community of their choosing.”

Rochko owned the platform until now to create “the code and conditions for the kind of social media he envisioned.” Now that the platform has grown considerably, Rochko intends to fulfill the promise he made at the start: to keep it “free of the control of a single wealthy individual.” He will also vacate his CEO post and shift his focus toward product strategy.