Frequently asked questions

Patchwork is Mastodon and more. For organisations it's a safe, customisable way to join the social web. For server admins, Patchwork offers a suite of patches covering spam, content moderation, federation choices and extra features. For end-users on a Patchwork server, Patchwork is safe, friendly and fun.

The team behind Patchwork, a knowledge-sharing fork of Mastodon that's built around communities. We started to spin out the underlying technology to make it work for any organisation, then during the spam wave of early 2024 we realised we'd built some useful features for any Mastodon server.

Patchwork is a super-lightweight fork of Mastodon - a suite of patches - which is 99% Mastodon, 1% Patchwork. We concentrate on the little extras where we can make a difference. As Mastodon upgrades, we also upgrade Patchwork to run the latest Mastodon version. Patchwork has been spun out of Newsmast, a big, complex fork of Mastodon. Now we've extracted some simpler parts of this code, we hope over time to work with the development team at Mastodon to get any features which interest them merged back into the main stream of code.

We provide a full support service to organisations. Our community team will work with you to understand your needs, our project manager will create a spec, and our development team will then help you to install Patchwork, select the options which are appropriate for you, and if necessary undertake any further customisation work. We're especially keen to act as on-ramp to the social web for news publishers, non-profits and academic institutions.

Patchwork offers easy to use patches for Mastodon which you can choose to select or not. The source code and web UI are updated at the touch of a button - Patchwork does everything for you. We offer tools to fight spam, add server level content moderation, make and display clear federation choices, add local features like long posts, local posts and themes, and allow Mastodon users to sign in as guests, interacting with your local timeline and their own home timeline seamlessly. Everything is set up using our Patchwork dashboard, which runs alongside your usual Mastodon admin account and server settings.

First off you install or upgrade Mastodon, following the standard Mastodon documentation. Then you do a further upgrade to Patchwork, following the instructions on our GitHub, here. It's no different to doing a standard Mastodon upgrade. If you're an organisation new to the Fediverse, our team will help you with your installation.

Patchwork servers offer users a safe, friendly and fun way to explore, interact with and post to the social web. If you're on a server which installs Patchwork, there's no need to do anything - you'll get all the features of Patchwork on your home server. You may just want to check that any app you use gives you all the benefits. If your organisation has installed a Patchwork server, then you can open an account and use this as your way into the social web

If a Patchwork server has Guest sign in enabled, you don't need an account to explore and interact with the timelines on that server. You can sign in using your usual Mastodon account. You'll then be able to see your home timeline, lists, bookmarks and profile alongside the local timeline or local plus community timelines on that server, and interact with both seamlessly. You can see this in action at Newsmast by logging into one of our apps with your Mastodon account. From there you can see all of the content on the Newsmast server, as if you are a part of it, but any interactions will come from your home server account. Our goal is to support other Fediverse developers to create versions of this system which can support any combination of servers, with the option to build communities within them - as we have. If you're interested, please contact our API Lead Elliott, elliott@newsmastfoundation.org.

Patchwork comes with a customised web UI, which is the starting point for any user. We have our own desktop/PWA version which you can find at patchwork.app. And we offer a stylish, easy-to-use mobile app, available on both Google Play and the Apple App Store. Now that Patchwork has launched we're reaching out to other app developers to get all the Patchwork extras included in their apps.

Your data is yours. Any cookies you encounter on the foundation website or our web apps are essential cookies to abide by international regulations and ensure the smooth running of our products. For more information, check out our Cookie Policy. Unlike most social media organisations, we will never sell any of your data. If you're on a standard Patchwork server, we don't have access to any of your data. If you're on a server with extra community timelines hosted by Newsmast, the only records we keep are the information relating to your account on a Patchwork server, such as the email you signed up with. We don’t even ask for your name. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy.

Patchwork servers moderate content at source through a denylist and content filters. We make it easy to link to the live IFTAS denylist, FediCheck. We offer three ready-made sets of content filters for servers to use, covering NSFW, for non-explicit servers, hate speech and crypto. Server admins can also add their own filters as appropriatae to their server. In line with Mastodon, all Patchwork servers have a set of published Server rules which users on that server need to follow. Servers have moderation tools which can be used to moderate content and accounts which are in breach of this: warning, limiting, silencing and ultimately suspending accounts. Users can moderate content themselves by muting or blocking accounts - or report more serious breaches to our moderators.

You can mute or block the account responsible, and if you want to go further, report the content to your server admin, by clicking on the three dots at the bottom of the post.

We’d love the opportunity to work with other Fediverse developers, developing Patchwork further, creating plug-ins, making Patchwork work with other Fediverse server software, and integrating Patchwork features with other apps. If you're a developer and want to get in touch, feel free reach out to our API Lead Elliott at elliott@newsmastfoundation.org.

Yes, Patchwork is open source. Our code is published GitHub at https://github.com/newsmast22.

Yes, our aim is to keep getting better and meeting the needs of more people. We’ve started out with a first suite of patches and community timelines, and we’re aiming to go a lot further!

We’re a small team working hard to bring to life a vision of social media which helps us all. We came to Mastodon and the Fediverse as part of the big migration at the end of 2022. Our community team have worked solidly for over a year to curate content and create communites on Newsmast, our knowledge-sharing server and app. Our development team have worked on Ruby and Rails, which Mastodon is built on, for many years. To see more about the people behind Patchwork, you can check out our Meet the Team page.

When we first launched, we were backed by a generous donation from one of our co-founders. That helped us find our feet and hire a small team to kickstart the project. Now we’re further along, we’re reaching out to potential funders, other organisations working along similar lines and - most importantly - smaller donations from people who like what we’re doing and want to help us develop further!

Patchwork is a non-profit, owned by a charitable foundation. Any money received by Patchwork is used to cover costs and enable us to grow. We're asking users to make donations to support us - ideally on a monthly basis.

The Newsmast Foundation is a UK registered charity (no. 1205953). The foundation owns and supports Patchwork and Newsmast, bringing knowledge-media to life.

Get in touch! We'd be delighted to hear from you.