3mo ago

Mastodon.online invitation if anyone wants it

For anyone who wants an invitation to join mastodon.online, let me know! Like mastodon.social, it is one of the two official communities run by the Mastodon non-profit. The difference is that mastodon.online is invite-only.

Joining an invite-only server helps keep out spammers who target mastodon.social and lets someone be part of a more exclusive community. This can help someone have a better-quality mastodon experience, overall.

Of course, to keep out scammers, the invitation isn't open to just anyone who asks, they will have to have a posting history of some sort.

37 comments

mastodon.online is now invite-only? I remember it was open.
- Yeah, they closed it around December 2023 as a way to combat spamming.
What country are its servers located?
- The servers are hosted by Hetzner with servers across Europe. They call out Hetzner when there is an outage.
  https://status.mastodon.online/cm722jt5p005y134nbp7jwfm2
  We have switched back to our original networking, and all functionality and performance is restored. Hetzner has confirmed that is was indeed a vSwitch issue that caused the network outage.
  More info about Hetzner here: https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/ueber-uns/
- Probably Germany.
Quick question for you. I signed up to Mastadon a while back, have been endeavouring to use it more regularly, and have been trying to sign on to as many local or often-subscribed orgs (on other media platforms). What I'm finding is that remarkably few of them are on Mastadon, and often those that are have been using them as a kind of alt-Twitter content splash with little engagement.
Are the actual active profiles/communities sort of walling themselves off from bots and bad actors in the way that you're describing? Invite-only groups whose activity isn't seen by non-members, or even accessible when searching for related tags/topics? Have I been casting about looking for content like someone looking for people in a neighbourhood where everyone is inside with the curtains drawn, or is there actually low engagement on Mastadon overall?
- If you want to follow specific organizations, unfortunately, there aren’t as many on Mastodon as on other social media platforms. Some are accessible through Threads.net federation, like @theonion@threads.net, through the Bluesky bridge, or via other non-Mastodon federated communities (e.g., Flipboard.com) if that’s something you’re interested in.
  However, some communities do wall themselves off from bots and bad actors. For example, the most popular Mastodon instance (mastodon.social) blocks the second-largest instance (pawoo.net). Other instances, like mastodon.art, defederate from AI art supporting instances, while others like hachyderm.io has defederated from Threads.net. Additionally, some Mastodon communities, like Truth Social, are entirely isolated and defederate from everyone else.
  So, if you want access to the widest range of communities, you may need to join more than one instance.
  
  this comment is how I learned Truth Social was based on Mastodon.
  
  It sounds as though there's a lot more to these new setups than I had initially thought, this might take a bit of reading just to pin down the basics. Thanks for the detailed response, much appreciated, those links are going to come in handy.
- .online still federates with most servers, its just .social but invite only.
  
  Interesting, I'll keep it in mind.
- It's harder to see on a large Lemmy instance like LW, but most of the fediverse is very patchwork. The network of Lemmy sites is itself very patchwork, with the MLs, Hexbear, Beehaw, NSFW, etc. all having different defederation profiles, but the whole space is an incomplete mesh. Mastodon has more themed instances than Lemmy, more very small instances than Lemmy, and a much bigger anti-capital, anti-commerce bent than Lemmy, with many more people complaining on main about other instances rules and federation policies, so if you look, you can really see it.
  But the whole fedi project is patchwork by nature.
  
  The Mastadon link is a revelation, I haven't seen any duplication of content, but TBH I haven't invested a fraction of the time there as here. The Federation is a great idea, although it's going to take a little while for me to wrap my head around all of the ins and outs of the patchwork framing.
I'd like one!
- Sorry, to keep out scammers I'm only giving them to people with a posting history.
Sounds perfect to check out what the fediverse is all about through a somewhat official channel :)
I mean, I created this account on lemmy.world after the whole Reddit black-out riots, but haven't picked it up after that, although I have been lurking around.
Get me in there.
- Sent via DM
I'll take one!
- Sent in DM!
  
  Thank you!
Sure shoot a dm. I don't use mastadon, maybe this will get me started
- Sent via DM
Well, sure I'd like to give it a look
- Sent via dm
I would like one
- Sent in DM!
  
  Thanks bro!
I would be interested!
- Sent!
- Invitation-only Mastodon instances prevent spammers by controlling who can join and maintaining a trust-based network. Since every new user must be invited by an existing member, admins can track invitation chains. If someone turns out to be a bad actor, admins can ban them and also ban anyone they invited. This is like pruning the whole spam network. This discourages spammers because their accounts can be removed along with their entire invitation tree.
Interesting, the only thing about mastodon is that it doesn’t interact with lemmy very well and that does kinda put me off from using it
I'll take one. Feel free to DM me.
- DM sent
I'll take one 🤷
- Sent via DM
  
  Thank you!

37 comments