For the past two years, an Open Source social network has been building on the foundations laid by years of Open Web work and quietly growing to provide a viable alternative to the social network megacorps we’ve grown used to. It’s name is Mastodon, and it wants you to be part of the community. In this talk, we’ll learn what Mastodon is, how it works, how you can participate, and how you can interact with the community using Python. Along the way, we’ll learn about OAuth, APIs, and best practices for writing bots. Attendees will walk away with the knowledge of how to build a Mastodon bot.