Mastodon launches integrated subscriptions for journalists on fediverse

If you are on Mastodon, you might notice new author’s signatures appearing next to articles – including those from On the edge. Click on the subscription and you will go directly to the author’s fediverse account, allowing you to follow their work wherever it is posted.

For now, you’ll only see this feature in mastodon.social and other instances using a recent Mastodon nightly release. You can see how author signatures appear below articles in this postwhich links you to the profile of Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko.

The subscription does not need to be linked to the author’s Mastodon account. It can also link to a person’s profile on Threads, Flipboard, WordPress with ActivityPub, PeerTube and others. To make it work, Mastodon says it created a new OpenGraph tag, which determines how web pages are viewed on sites like Mastodon, but also noted that publishers will need to contact Mastodon directly to have their authors added.

In addition to On the edgestories of MacRumors It is Mac Stories will also contain clickable signatures. Mastodon is also working to open the feature to more media outlets, but currently requires “manual review” to prevent “malicious websites from framing users as their authors”. However, Mastodon plans to launch “a self-service system” to manage the sites authors can appear on in the future.

Even though it hasn’t been widely implemented yet, it seems like an interesting way to quickly find out who wrote an article and check out their other work across multiple platforms.