Tech
Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, plans to target creators with new features
Mastodon, a decentralized, open source social media platform and alternative to larger apps like X and Threads, announced on Wednesday its plans to make its app more approachable for newcomers while also targeting creators with the launch of new features.
The changes follow the expansion of Mastodon’s core development team over the past 18 months to include people with experience across web and mobile and back end, as well as the hiring of a dedicated designer, according to a new blog post co-authored by Mastodon’s technical director, Renaud Chaput, and product designer, Imani Joy. The post outlines the app’s future direction.
The app, which is part of the fediverse — a larger, decentralized social web operating on the ActivityPub protocol — was thrust back into the spotlight when Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now called X, in October 2022. Since then, it has seen occasional growth spurts but has often struggled to retain new users due to its more complicated setup. On Mastodon, you don’t simply create an account with a username and password; you also have to pick a server to join — an additional step that often confuses those new to decentralization.
Today, Mastodon sees somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million monthly active users, depending on the source. One third-party tracker puts the figure closer to 750,000, while another estimates as many as 1 million. Mastodon’s own site says the figure is around 785,000.
As part of its coming updates, the organization says it will try to make this onboarding process more understandable, while also promoting smaller servers.
To date, new users have often defaulted to picking the largest servers, but that undermines the power of a decentralized web. As the blog post notes, “Mastodon is best when communities are spread across many independent servers, each with its own character and focus.”
New admin tools will help indie server operators handle maintenance and moderation duties more easily, including a feature to use external blocklists. The organization will also offer ways to set up content scanning for detecting illegal content and spam, along with other tools to reduce media storage usage by serving remote media posts through a trusted third party.
In addition, Mastodon will look to bring on more content creators, including public figures, journalists, and institutions, with a series of updates to its app. To do so, it’s introducing a redesigned user profile that lets individuals showcase their work as well as an enhanced compose experience. Also in the works is a new email notification option that would allow someone to follow their updates, even if they don’t yet have a Mastodon account. That could appeal to those who want to follow newsletter writers, reporters, thought leaders, and other creators, while allowing those creators to reach a wider audience.
The changes follow the rollout of other new features in recent months, including Quote Posts, similar to the feature on X and others, but with more user controls, and plans for its own take on Starter Pack-style user recommendations, called Collections.
The updates follow a shift in leadership at Mastodon: founder Eugen Rochko stepped down as CEO after the platform announced its transition to a nonprofit structure at the beginning of the year. In his place, Austria-based Felix Hlatky has taken over as executive director. In addition, Mastodon recently announced it will split Hlatky’s duties with Dr. Marius Rothermund, a certified German lawyer. Dr. Rothermund will primarily provide legal expertise during the restructuring, which involves three markets — the U.S., Germany, and Belgium.
Tech
SoftBank to spend an eye-popping $33B to build huge US gas power plant
SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy is expected to build a massive 9.2 gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant on the Ohio-Kentucky border, according to a report from Bloomberg. If completed, it would be the largest power plant in the U.S., capable of powering around 7.5 million homes.
With a price tag of $33 billion, the project would be more expensive than recent natural gas-fired power plants, which have skyrocketed in cost, Bloomberg notes. It’s unclear who will ultimately foot the bill, though traditionally rate-payers have shouldered the burden for new generating capacity.
The Japanese investor is a partner in the Stargate project with OpenAI. SB Energy did not say whether the new power plant would feed directly into the grid or if it would power data centers. OpenAI and SoftBank are in the process of building a “proof of concept” data center at GM’s former Lordstown automotive assembly plant.
A power plant of this size is likely to take years, perhaps a decade, to complete even before taking into account the shortage of natural gas turbines. If completed, the project could emit around 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to our calculations based on public, energy-use metrics. When including methane leaks from the natural gas supply chain, the climate impact could be even bigger.
Tech
Reddit is testing a new AI search feature for shopping
Reddit announced on Thursday that it’s testing a new AI search tool that takes community recommendations and matches them with products from some of the company’s shopping and advertising partners.
A small group of users in the U.S. will start to see search results that include interactive product carousels with pricing, images, and direct where-to-buy links.
The announcement reflects Reddit’s broader push to combine its community-driven platform with e-commerce capabilities. The move comes as Reddit launched its first shoppable ad product last year, called Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), which display personalized product recommendations to users based on their interests.
Now, when users who are part of the test search for something like “best noise-canceling headphones” or “electronic gift ideas for a college student,” they will see a carousel of related products at the bottom of the results.
This carousel will feature products directly mentioned by users from conversations on related posts and comments. If users tap on the product, they can view more details and then be directed to the retailer to purchase the item.
“This feature surfaces top-recommended products directly from discussions, giving redditors instant information about any product,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This test is designed to make Reddit easier to navigate while keeping community perspectives at the center of the experience. We’ll continue learning from how people use this new feature and refine the experience over time.”
While platforms like TikTok and Instagram have long integrated shopping features, Reddit is now looking to follow suit. Of course, Reddit isn’t the only tech platform that recently started exploring AI-driven shopping, as OpenAI’s ChatGPT rolled out an “Instant Checkout” feature last September that lets users make Etsy and Shopify purchases within conversations.
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Thursday’s announcement comes after Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said during the company’s earnings release last week that the platform’s AI search engine could be the next big opportunity for its business, not just in terms of product, but also as a revenue driver.
Huffman also noted that weekly active users for search grew 30% over the past year, increasing from 60 million to 80 million, while weekly active users for the AI-powered Reddit Answers feature rose from 1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter.
Tech
As browser wars heat up, Chrome adds new productivity features
As AI companies and startups push their way into the web browser market, the world’s biggest browser, Google Chrome, is rolling out a handful of new features. The company on Thursday announced the official launch of a trio of options, including Split View, PDF annotations, and a Save to Google Drive feature, designed to more deeply integrate Chrome with one of Google’s other online services.
While these particular additions aren’t focused on AI, Google already integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Chrome. The move was made in response to the increased competition from AI providers like OpenAI and Perplexity, which are dabbling in agentic browsers. These so-called browser wars have pushed Google to be less stagnant in terms of developing and releasing more consumer-facing features.
With Split View, multitasking in Chrome has become easier as the feature puts two pages side-by-side in the same tab. This lets you work across two web pages or watch a video while taking notes, among other things. To use the feature, you’ll drag a tab to the left or right edge of the browser window or right-click a link and select “Open Link in Split View.” The tabs will automatically snap into place. When no longer needed, you can exit the Split View layout via an option found via a right-click.

Another practical addition is the PDF annotations feature, which lets you add notes to a PDF or highlight its text from the browser. This means you don’t have to download the PDF and then open it in another application to work with its content. The option, a long time coming, could make it much simpler to do basic PDF tasks, like digitally signing a document, filling out a form, making notes within a file or personal document, and more.

Finally, the new Save to Google Drive feature will allow you to save any PDF directly to your Google Drive account, instead of your computer, where it may get lost. When using this feature, the saved files will appear in a Saved from Chrome folder in your Drive, making them easy to find.

Today’s update follows the expansion of Gemini and other agentic features to Chromebook users last month. And soon, Chrome is poised to adopt another change that was first spearheaded by its competitors: support for vertical tabs. (Tech-savvy users can even enable that option now, in an experimental phase, by changing a flag.)
This reimagined way to organize open tabs was one of the flagship features in The Browser Company’s first alternative browser, Arc, and is now found in its AI browser, Dia. By adding this feature and the others, Google hopes to give Chrome users fewer reasons to switch.
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