Mastodon/FAQ
| Mastodon/FAQ | |
|---|---|
| Part Of | Mastodon, Mastodon/Social WG |
| Parts/Subprojects | Mastodon/Migration_help |
| Contributors | Manisha Sinha
|
| Completion Status | Ongoing |
| Active Status | Active |
Up to Mastodon/Social WG
What is the fediverse?
Fediverse is a portmanteau of federation and universe. This universe is comprised of self-governing servers that are federated (i.e. interconnected). The servers in the fediverse can communicate with each other by following open communication protocols like ActivityPub and OStatus.
What does "self-governing servers" mean in the context of the fediverse?
Self-governing here refers to the fact that each server in the fediverse has their own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, moderation policies, and/or decision-making policies.
What does it mean for a server to be self-hosted?
Self-hosting a server means that an individual or a Technical Working Group runs and maintains the code on the server themselves rather than paying a company to do the same.
What is an instance in the fediverse?
Each server in the fediverse is called an instance.
What are identities on the fediverse?
Members of an instance can create accounts for things like microblogging, hosting videos, social networking, etc. These accounts are commonly referred to as identities.
What is Mastodon?
A lot of servers on the fedi self-host various open-source softwares that enable federated communication. Mastodon is such a free and open source software that uses the ActivityPub protocol for inter-instance and intra-instance communication.
Which software is neuromatch.social running on its instance?
We are currently running a fork of glitch-soc which is a friendly fork of Mastodon.
How is my data protected on neuromatch.social?
Disclaimer - while our node provider (Linode) takes daily and weekly backups of everything on our server, we cannot guarantee that data backup in case the node provider itself goes down.
What is your data-privacy policy?
DMs are not end-2-end encrypted on our server. Moderators and Admins have access to DMs but they won't read them barring exceptional circumstances such as when a report is filed against a user's unwanted DMs or in case any legal circumstances demand for this.
Where is neuromatch.social's Mastodon instance physically located?
Our server is located in the Newark, NJ region in the US.
I already have a mastodon account, why should I join neuromatch.social?
You definitely don't need to! Unless there is an instance-level block, you can still follow and be followed by identities from neuromatch.social. That's the beauty of the fediverse! :) However, if you would like to be a part of a cooperatively-governed instance and believe in our vision and mission, you could benefit from being a part of neuromatch.social. You also have the option of creating a new identity on neuromatch.social while keeping your current identity on another instance if you wish.
What is a blocklist?
At the instance-level: it is a list of instances that are blocked by the moderators [predominantly due to a violation of the code of conduct]. At the user-level: it is a list of users and instances blocked by the user.
I really like neuromatch.social's vision and mission and would love to become a member. How do I do that?
Register on neuromatch.social and follow the onboarding instructions sent in the welcome email :)
What is the cost of becoming a member?
Membership is free thanks to a generous sponsorship by Neuromatch. If you are interested in helping us become self-sustaining please consider volunteering for our Finance Working Group.
What is neuromatch.social's motivation for spinning up this instance?
Our mission is to democratize science. With this instance, we envision building a decentralized cooperatively-governed global community of people who share our mission, and channeling our collective efforts to push the boundaries of scientific discourse and communication as we know it.
I really like neuromatch.social's vision and mission and am looking to migrate from my current instance. Can you help me?
Awesome! Here's our guide: https://wiki.neuromatch.io/Mastodon/Migration_help
Please note that full migration can take ~24 hrs to complete after you've initiated it.
You can export your Follows list from the old account and then import the list on your new account:
There are also general resources available here: