Seeing as we have so many new users the past few weeks, let me mention that development of Mastodon and hosting of mastodon.social is not funded by venture capital or ads, but through crowdfunding:

https://patreon.com/mastodon

and

https://opencollective.com/mastodon

And for certain tiers of support, your name or your company's logo is listed on our sponsors page:

https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors