21 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_data/authors.yml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | kev:
2 | name: Kev Quirk
3 | email: kev@fosstodon.org
4 | url: https://fosstodon.org/@kev
5 | handle: "@kev@fosstodon.org"
6 | mike:
7 | name: Mike Stone
8 | email: mike@fosstodon.org
9 | url: https://fosstodon.org/@mike
10 | handle: "@mike@fosstodon.org"
11 | gina:
12 | name: Gina
13 | email: gina@fosstodon.org
14 | url: https://fosstodon.org/@gina
15 | handle: "@gina@fosstodon.org"
16 | brandon:
17 | name: Brandon
18 | email: btp@fosstodon.org
19 | url: https://fosstodon.org/@btp
20 | handle: "@btp@fosstodon.org"
21 | kris:
22 | name: Kris
23 | email: kris@fosstodon.org
24 | url: https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain
25 | handle: "@krisfreedain@fosstodon.org"
26 | fosstodon:
27 | name: The Fosstodon Team
28 | email: mail@fosstodon.org
29 | url: https://fosstodon.org/@fosstodon
30 | handle: "@fosstodon@fosstodon.org"
31 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_data/admins.yml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | - name: Gina
2 | role: Admin
3 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/gina.webp
4 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@gina
5 | description: ✨ Projectmanager | Memefluencer | Tech nerd | FOSS enthusiast | DIY's ✨ One of Fosstodon's admins. Committed to keeping the fediverse safe, inclusive and fun. She/her. 🏳️🌈&🏳️⚧️ ally.
6 |
7 | - name: Krisfreedain
8 | role: Admin
9 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/krisfreedain.webp
10 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain
11 | description: Community Manager for The OpenSearch Project & OpenSearch Software Foundation (at AWS) OpenSource | (opinions are my own) | father | husband | Buddhist | meditation | garage gym powerlifting | minimalism | he/him | Portland
12 |
13 | - name: Brandon
14 | role: Admin
15 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/brandon.webp
16 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@btp
17 | description: Moving slow and fixing things. Brandon is a NOC sys admin by day, and aspiring developer by night.
18 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/about.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: About | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: Some info on how things work around here.
4 | permalink: /about/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | # About Us
8 |
9 | The whole point of Fosstodon is to be a community of like-minded people who enjoy Free & Open Source Software (FOSS). Running a social network can be expensive, so [we accept donations in various forms](/support). Originally founded by [Kev Quirk](https://fosstodon.org/@kev) and [Mike Stone](https://fosstodon.org/@mike) as a means to have their own presence in the Fediverse, it quickly grew.
10 |
11 | Originally funded out of pocket, Fosstodon grew beyond what Kev and Mike could afford to pay for by themselves. The community has generously donated to allow for Fosstodon to grow. From the very start, we committed to donating any extra money we have available to other open source projects. We want to make sure we are as [transparent as possible](/finances) when it comes to the support we receive from our members.
12 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/contact.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Contact | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: Want to get in touch? This page tells you how.
4 | permalink: /contact/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | # Contact Us
8 |
9 |
10 | 👩💻 SUPPORT ENQUIRIES
11 |
If you're having problems accessing your account, or with Fosstodon/Mastodon in general, please use this email address to get in touch:
21 |
22 |
23 | {: .notice}
24 | **Note:** These email addresses are randomly generated and will therefore change regularly to prevent spam.
25 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_data/founders.yml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | - name: Kev Quirk
2 | role: Founder
3 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/kev.webp
4 | link: https://micro.blog/kev
5 | description: Kev lives in Wales 🏴 and works in InfoSec. He's a father of 2, husband of 1, and a keeper of dogs, cats, fish, shrimp (yes, shrimp) and chickens. He enjoys web development, collecting watches and motorbikes.
You can usually find him posting on his profile about all manor of uninteresting things and on his personal website.
6 |
7 | - name: Mike Stone
8 | role: Founder
9 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/mike.webp
10 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@mike
11 | description: Mike is a husband, father, and big nerd. The other co-founder of Fosstodon, he’s probably posting right now about something he’s found on the Internet and thinks is interesting. Loves discussions about free and open source software/hardware, artificial intelligence, and long walks on the beach.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2018/2018-08-22-welcome.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Welcome
3 | description: Our first post on the new Hub, hello world!
4 | author: kev
5 | permalink: /welcome/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Now, you may be thinking to yourself _"why on earth does a social network need a blog?"_ Well, we wanted a place where we could make announcements and talk to you guys where the 500 character limit of Fosstodon isn't enough. For example:
10 |
11 | * New Mastodon features etc.
12 | * Announcements about the Fosstodon project as a whole.
13 | * Details of any donations we make to other projects.
14 | * Anything else we feel is important.
15 |
16 | We intend for this blog to be a single source of truth when it comes to official announcements, news and information about all things Fosstodon. Whenever we publish a new post on here, we will post a link on our [official Fosstodon account](https://fosstodon.org/@fosstodon), so please make sure you're following that account if you're a Fosstodon member.
17 |
18 | You can also subscribe to the [RSS feed](/feed) on this site, is you so wish.
19 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/LICENSE:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | MIT License
2 |
3 | Copyright (c) 2021 fosstodon
4 |
5 | Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
6 | of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
7 | in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
8 | to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
9 | copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
10 | furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
11 |
12 | The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
13 | copies or substantial portions of the Software.
14 |
15 | THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
16 | IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
17 | FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
18 | AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
19 | LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
20 | OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
21 | SOFTWARE.
22 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-06-15-another-round-of-donations.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Another round of donations
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Yet again, we're donating some spare funds to open source projects.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /another-round-of-donations/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | **Fosstodon is preparing to make 2 donations to a couple of open source projects, in the amount of $200 each. We need our Fosstodon members' input on where to send those donations.**
14 |
15 | [Click here](https://zfrmz.eu/vpqdICp7XIsYFPyd50gi ) to submit the info for an open source project that you'd like us to support!
16 |
17 | We'll stop taking submissions, on 6/26. At that time, our Fosstodon Patreons will vote on those submissions and narrow it down to 2 entries.
18 |
19 | If you're interested in having a say on where the donations will go, you can sign up to become a Patreon, [here](https://patreon.com/fosstodon).
20 |
21 | *A HUGE "thanks!" to all of our current Patreons, as we wouldn't be able to do this awesome stuff without you guys!*
22 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2021/2021-04-21-new-member-sign-up.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: New member sign up
3 | author: kev
4 | description: We've made an adjustment to the way new members sign up and it's already been a huge help.
5 | permalink: /new-member-sign-up/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Recently, we made the decision to require manual review and approval for all new Fosstodon accounts. The decision was based on the growing number of bot and spam accounts plaguing the Mastodon Community. While we assumed this might cause a significant amount of additional work for our staff members, we've actually seen a slight decrease in the effort involved. Most of the new account submissions are only in queue for a few hours, at most, while the number of spam/bot reports has decreased quite a bit. We're happy to report that we've already seen support for the decision.
10 |
11 | Anytime we make decisions, like this, it's never to make Fosstodon more difficult to join or provide unnecessary obstacles. Rather, we make these decisions/implementations to improve the community experience for our members. We always appreciate your support and feedback so, if you have any additional suggestions on how we can make Fosstodon a better place for it's members, send them our way!
12 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-08-31-thank-you-for-your-reports.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Thank You For Your Reports
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Reporting troublesome toots really helps us, so thank you.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /thank-you-for-your-reports/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Recently, several of you made reports of a few accounts that were making concerning toots surrounding pedophilia and the likes thereof. Considering the nature of the content and breach of our [CoC](/coc), our Fosstodon Staff Members acted quickly to isolate and remove the accounts/toots.
14 |
15 | All-in-all, it appears this was a targeted attack across 6 accounts, of which, none were bots. The involved accounts all joined within the last 24hrs. and boosted each other's toots in order to increase exposure.
16 |
17 | Due to the overwhelming concern that was raised, by many of our community members, we felt that it was appropriate to provide a formal update and thank you for your reports. Again, we appreciate all the reports that came in, regarding this matter, and encourage everyone to remain vigilant with your reports of suspicious or concerning activity.
18 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_data/senior-mods.yml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | - name: Ru
2 | role: Senior Moderator
3 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/ru.webp
4 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@ru
5 | description: Ru is a contract web developer from south Asia. She takes pride in supporting Arsenal, and wishes to travel the world one day, meeting all the friends she has made on the fediverse along the way. Her FOSS journey has been ambivalent — switching from FOSS all the things to FOSS when it's comfortable. You can also find more about her on her personal website.
6 |
7 | - name: Joel
8 | role: Senior Moderator
9 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/joel.webp
10 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@joel
11 | description: Joel is a mechatronics engineer from Mexico, he has embraced a world of hobbies from origami to card tricks, to graphic design and speed-cubing. His journey led him to FOSS, and FOSS led him to more hobbies. He enjoys gaming, manga, books and blogging, a lot. Open to chat anytime, as long as he isn't adding new features to his website.
12 |
13 | - name: El_on_libera
14 | role: Senior Moderator
15 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/el_on_libera.webp
16 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@el_on_libera
17 | description: Libera Chat and OFTC staffer. They/She.
18 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_layouts/default.html:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 |
2 |
3 | {% include head-custom.html %}
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
Fosstodon Hub
8 |
9 | {% include navigation.html %}
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 | {{ content }}
15 |
16 |
17 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2023/2023-09-04-were-invite-only.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: We've Gone Invite Only
3 | author: kev
4 | description: We've decided to change from requiring approvals to join, to invite only.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | As a team, we've been discussing how we can better foster a community feel on the instance. Many of our older users look back fondly to a time when we were a much smaller community, so we've decided to make a change to try and bring that back.
9 |
10 | **From now on, Fosstodon will be invite only.**
11 |
12 | We hope that by making this change, Fosstodon will become more community focussed, and less service focussed. We don't want to be the biggest instance on the Fedi, we just want to have a nice community where people can hang out and enjoy.
13 |
14 | ## What does invite only mean?
15 |
16 | It effectively means that signups are not possible. If you go to the Fosstodon home page right now, there's no sign up form. Instead there's just a message that says we're invite only.
17 |
18 | Instead, any new users will need to use an invite link that's been generated by an existing user.
19 |
20 | This means that Fosstodon will grow much more slowly, but (more importantly) it will grow via recommendations, which should (hopefully) bring back some of that community vibe.
21 |
22 | If you want to generate an invite link for your friends, head to [https://fosstodon.org/invites](https://fosstodon.org/invites) and generate a link.
23 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2021/2021-10-16-time-to-show-some-foss-love.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Time to show some FOSS love!
3 | author: cooper
4 | description: FOSS project donation time!
5 | permalink: /time-to-show-some-foss-love/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Round number...umm...well, we've lost track because, it's been quite a few!
10 |
11 | Hey folks, it's [Cooper](https://fosstodon.org/@cooper) and it's that time, again, where we've saved up enough donations to support a few open source projects. As we've always mentioned; we’ll spread the love to open source projects when we’ve reached a surplus in funding. For this round, we've decided to make 2 donations in the amount of $300 each.
12 |
13 | We need our members’ input on where to send those donations. [Click here](http://donations.fosstodon.org/) to submit your suggestions for projects that you’d like us to support.
14 |
15 | We’ll stop taking submissions on October 29th. At that time our Fosstodon Patreons will vote on those submissions and narrow it down to 2 entries.
16 |
17 | If you’re interested in having a say on where the donations will go, you can sign up to become a Patreon [here](https://patreon.com/fosstodon).
18 |
19 | As always, we're offering our sincerest "thanks" to our current Patreons and other supporters. None of this would be possible without you! We know you're probably tired of hearing it but, we’re truly proud to have such a supportive community. It makes our roles much easier and we appreciate all of you more than you know!
20 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/feed.xml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | layout: none
3 | ---
4 |
5 |
10 |
11 | {{ site.title | xml_escape }}
12 | {% if site.description %}{{ site.description | xml_escape }}{% endif %}
13 | {{ site.feed_update_period | default: "daily" | xml_escape }}
14 | {{ site.feed_update_frequency | default: 1 | xml_escape }}
15 | {{ site.url }}
16 |
17 | {% for post in site.posts limit:1 %}{{ post.date | date_to_rfc822 }}{% endfor %}
18 | {% assign feed_items = site.feed_items | default: 10 %}
19 | {% for post in site.posts limit:feed_items %}
20 |
21 | {{ post.title | xml_escape }}
22 | {% if post.author.name %}
23 | {{ post.author.name | xml_escape }}
24 | {% endif %}
25 |
26 | {{ post.content | xml_escape }}
27 |
28 | {{ post.date | date_to_rfc822 }}
29 | {{ site.url }}{{ post.url }}
30 | {{ site.url }}{{ post.url }}
31 |
32 | {% endfor %}
33 |
34 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-10-11-time-to-support-some-foss-projects.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Time To Support Some FOSS Projects
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Here we go again...another round of FOSS project donations! :-)
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /time-to-support-some-foss-projects/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Despite the current events, our members have continued to pour out financial support for Fosstodon and we couldn't be more humbled. As we've previously stated, we'll spread the love to open source projects when we've reached a surplus in funding.
14 |
15 | With that being said, we're preparing to make 2 donations to a couple of open source projects, in the amount of $200 each. We need our members' input on where to send those donations. [Click here](http://donations.fosstodon.org) to submit your suggestions for projects that you'd like us to support.
16 |
17 | We'll stop taking submissions, on 10/25. At that time, our Fosstodon Patreons will vote on those submissions and narrow it down to 2 entries.
18 |
19 | If you're interested in having a say on where the donations will go, you can sign up to become a Patreon, [here](https://patreon.com/fosstodon).
20 |
21 | A HUGE “thanks!” to all of our current Patreons and other supporters, as we wouldn't be able to do this awesome stuff without you guys! We're proud to have an extremely supportive community and appreciate all of you, more than you know!
22 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2022/2022-11-07-fosstodon-outage.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Why is Fosstodon currently down?
3 | author: kev
4 | permalink: /why-is-fosstodon-down/
5 | layout: post
6 | description: We had to do some maintenance which brought the instance down for a while. Sorry about that.
7 | ---
8 | {: .notice-red}
9 |
Fosstodon is now back up. If you’re still seeing this page, please CLEAR YOUR CACHE.
10 |
11 |
12 | Hey folks, Kev here from the Fosstodon team.
13 |
14 | This is just a quick message to explain to you guys why Fosstodon is down, of all times, during this **MAHOOSIVE** wave of traffic from Twitter.
15 |
16 | Well, we're down because we're migrating our database to a new server for a couple of reasons:
17 |
18 | * It will give us more room to grow and upgrade the service, keeping the high performance we're known for.
19 | * It will also help Hugo from [Masto.host](https://masto.host) with some much needed relief for other instances on his service.
20 |
21 | Basically, we're doing it for the greater good.
22 |
23 | {: .notice}
24 | **Note:** We will remain on Masto.host - this is a migration *within* their service.
25 |
26 | We estimate that the server will be **down for around 2 hours**, so we should be back online by early-afternoon Eastern. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to [email us](mailto:mail@fosstodon.org).
27 |
28 | Thanks to everyone for the ongoing support. We're really sorry if this outage impacts you negatively, but it really is for the best.
29 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-04-18-adding-a-new-sticker-to-our-shop.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Adding A New Sticker To Our Shop
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: More sticky swag for you to enjoy!
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /adding-a-new-sticker-to-our-shop/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | If you didn't know already, Fosstodon has an online shop where we sell stickers. Previously we had 3 sticker designs in the shop, but we just added a new one.
14 |
15 | 
16 |
17 | The sticker was created by our very own [Kev Quirk](https://fosstodon.org/@kev) and is designed to looks like a Neo-traditional tattoo. Following some positive feedback about Kev's designs, particularly this penguin one, we decided to add it to the shop so you guys can adorn your laptops' with them, should you wish.
18 |
19 | The new design is available to buy in our shop right now. [Click here](https://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/sticker/fosstodon-penguin-tattoo/1409991/) to buy one.
20 |
21 | ## Supporting Fosstodon
22 |
23 | By purchasing one of our sticker designs, we get a small payout from the purchase. So it's win/win - you get some cool swag, and we get a little bit of support from you to help keep the lights on.
24 |
25 | We also have some [other cool designs on our shop](https://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/Fosstodon/), so don't forget to take a look at them too!
26 |
27 | #### And finally, thanks for support Fosstodon. :-)
28 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2023/2023-12-05-introducing-supporter-tags.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Introducing Supporter Tags
3 | author: kev
4 | description: We've just added supporter tags for all those cool people who financially support us on Patreon
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 | As of today, we're launching a new tag within Fosstodon that celebrates those who have chosen to financially support us. If you support us on **Patreon**, here's what your profile should now look like:
8 |
9 | 
10 |
11 | This should effect all current and past Patreon supporters where we have been able to match your Patreon email with your registered email on Fosstodon. Whether your membership is currently active or not.
12 |
13 | ## What about other supporters?
14 |
15 | Unfortunately, we can't add this tag for supporters who have donated by Liberapay or PayPal as there is no way for us to access your email address. **If you have supported us via one of these methods, please [drop us an email](https://hub.fosstodon.org/contact/) and we will work to get the tag added to your account.**
16 |
17 | {: .notice}
18 | **Note:** You will need to add some proof of your donation to the email **and your Fosstodon username**.
19 |
20 | ## What about new supporters?
21 |
22 | Now that we've gone through the backlog of existing supporters, we will review new supporters on a regular basis and add them. So you should see the supporter tag appear on your account within a couple days of becoming a supporter.
23 |
24 | Become a Fosstodon supporter
25 |
26 | Finally, thanks to everyone who has financially supported Fosstodon, whether that's in the past, or at present. We wouldn't be able to operate this beast without it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2019/2019-06-17-donations-round-2.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Donations - Round 2
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: This is our second round of open source donations - it's very exciting!
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /donations-round-2/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | With a combination of sticker sales and regular [donations via PayPal and [Patreon](/support-us), we have been able to make our second donation to open source projects way sooner than we first thought.
14 |
15 | The first time around we made a donation of $150 to the Mastodon project. This was a great choice by our Patrons, as it allowed us to give something back to the project that is the backbone of Fosstodon.
16 |
17 | Our Patrons have spoken again, and this time they chose 2 projects to donate to. We're thrilled to say that we just made 2 donations of $100 each. One to [Elementary OS](https://elementary.io/) and the other to [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org). Both Elementary and Let's Encrypt are fantastic projects, and the Fosstodon team are incredibly proud of the support our community continues to give us, which in turn allows us as a community to support other projects.
18 |
19 | If you're interested in becoming a Patron and having a say in what project(s) we donate to next, you can [become a Patron here](https://patreon.com/fosstodon). You can also read more about our current funding and where your money goes on [our about page](/about).
20 |
21 | #### Thank you all for supporting Fosstodon!
22 |
23 | 
24 |
25 | 
26 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-01-21-stickers-are-back.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Stickers are back!
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: If you want some cool sticky Fosstodon swag, we got you covered.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /stickers-are-back/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | 
14 |
15 | If you have been a member of Fosstodon for some time, you will likely remember the stickers that we offered for sale. We ordered them from Sticker Mule and they were excellent quality.
16 |
17 | It was a real pain for Kev and Mike to manage, as they were having to post them manually all over the globe. In the end, the stickers sold out and the guys started to look at their options.
18 |
19 | Numerous people asked for more designs, but it was already a nightmare to manage, so more designs would only make it more difficult. After reviewing a number of potential suppliers, we ended up opening a shop with *Design By Humans*.
20 |
21 | They will handle the postage for us, and the price of the stickers hasn't changed - they're still $3.00 each.
22 |
23 | ## New Designs
24 |
25 | Yes, we added some new designs too! You can still buy the familiar Fosstodon mascot that was created by Jens. But a lot of people really liked the Tux sticker that's on our mascot's laptop - **you can now have that sticker too!**
26 |
27 | We have added Jens' Tux design to our sticker shop, as well as a Fosstodon logo sticker. We may add more in the future. If there's a design you would like added, [get in touch](/contact).
28 |
29 | If you want to check out our shop on Design By Humans, and maybe even order some stickers, please use the button below:
30 |
31 | Buy Stickers -->
32 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2025/2025-07-02-fider-announcement.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Announcing Fosstodon's Fider instance
3 | author: fosstodon
4 | description: Fosstodon has launched vote.fosstodon.org
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | We're excited to announce our own [Fider](https://fider.io) instance: [vote.fosstodon.org](https://vote.fosstodon.org)! Fider is a simple feature voting system that will give our community a platform to engage directly with the Fosstodon team and vote on and discuss suggestions and feedback for Fosstodon itself.
9 |
10 | This platform is for Fosstodon users only; you can log in directly with your Fosstodon account. We look forward to hearing more feedback from the community to build a more transparent and collaborative platform together!
11 |
12 | ### Vote.Fosstodon.org Participation Rules
13 |
14 | ✅ Basic Participation Rules
15 |
16 | 1. Be respectful and constructive. Only post suggestions or feedback that contribute positively to the community or server.
17 | 2. One idea per post. Keep posts focused so they are easier to vote on and implement.
18 | 3. Search before posting. Use the search bar to avoid duplicate ideas or feedback.
19 |
20 | 🚫 Prohibited Content
21 |
22 | 1. No hate speech, harassment, or discrimination. Posts violating our Code of Conduct will be removed.
23 | 2. No personal grievances or call-outs. Vote is for ideas, not interpersonal conflicts or moderation complaints.
24 | 3. No spam or self-promotion. This space is not for advertising or off-topic links.
25 |
26 | 🧹 Moderation & Voting
27 |
28 | 1. Not all top-voted ideas will be implemented. Votes help prioritize, but final decisions rest with the moderation/admin team.
29 | 2. Moderators may edit, merge, or remove posts. We may adjust wording for clarity or merge duplicates to keep things clean.
30 | 3. Use appropriate tags. Tag your post with categories (e.g., moderation, features, community) to help others navigate.
31 |
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/_posts/2020/2020-02-16-were-not-just-foss.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We're Not Just FOSS
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: People come to Fosstodon for so much more than just FOSS.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /were-not-just-foss/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Over the last year or so, we have had a handful of members leave Fosstodon to either start their own instance (which is awesome), or to join another instance as they feel they can't post about subjects other than FOSS on Fosstodon (not so awesome).
14 |
15 | Our [Code of Conduct](/coc) says the following in the **Goals** section:
16 |
17 | > Provide a venue for casual conversations — we may all be passionate about technology, but that doesn't mean that our conversations always centre on that shared passion.
18 |
19 | #### That's right, we're not just FOSS!
20 |
21 | We have always said from the start that free & open source software, or tech in general, is a common passion that our members have. However, that isn't what defines us as people, and it certainly isn't the only subject we want our members to talk about.
22 |
23 | For example, [Kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev) is into motorbikes and fish-keeping, [Gina](https://fosstodon.org/@gina) is into bouldering and fitness...both Kev and Gina are into dogs! They both post about these subject regularly, as well a tech stuff.
24 |
25 | ## Diversity of thought
26 |
27 | We want Fosstodon to be a place where people feel comfortable posting about any passion or interest they have. So long as it aligns to the rest of our CoC, then we're all good.
28 |
29 | So, the next time you're thinking about posting something that isn't FOSS related - **DO IT!** We hate to see members of our little corner of the fediverse leave, just because they feel like they can't post anything other than FOSS.
30 |
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/_posts/2020/2020-11-19-once-again-youve-done-it.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Once Again You've Done It
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Details of our 4th round of donations to open source projects.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /once-again-youve-done-it/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Despite the current events, around the world, the Fosstodon Community has completed another round of donations to a couple of awesome open source projects.
14 |
15 | Our [recent post](/time-to-support-some-foss-projects) called on the community's help with suggestions for open source projects that could use a helping hand. We had an overwhelming amount of submissions for so many different projects. With the help of our [Patreons](https://www.patreon.com/fosstodon), we narrowed it down to two projects that we were able to reach out to and support.
16 |
17 | *Earlier today, we were very happy to send a $200.00 payment to [EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)](https://www.eff.org/) and another $200.00 donation to the [Tor Project](https://www.torproject.org/).*
18 |
19 | 
20 |
21 | ## Keep it coming!
22 |
23 | We continue to maintain our stance of always donating any additional funding to open source projects. When excess funds build up, we reach out to the Fossotodon Community and ask for input/votes on where to send it. Once the community provides some possible candidates, our Patreons cast votes on who will receive the funding. If you want to sign up to support Fosstodon and other projects, you can use [this link](https://www.patreon.com/fosstodon) or read more about supporting us, [here](/support). Our Patreon tiers start at just $1/month.
24 |
25 | **Thanks for your continued support and helping us make sure Fosstodon is one of the best Mastodon instances to be a part of!**
26 |
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/_posts/2021/2021-11-30-2021-donation-round.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: 2021 Donation Results
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Here are the results of the latest round of Fosstodon donations.
7 |
8 | # Don't change this
9 | layout: post
10 | ---
11 |
12 | We recently started [another round of donations for this year](time-to-show-some-foss-love/) where we had enough spare funds to **donate $300 to two open source projects**.
13 |
14 | First came the nominations round where a tonne a really great open source projects were nominated. We love seeing this level of involvement from the Fosstodon community - keep it up, folks!
15 |
16 | Once we had the shortlist nailed down, we de-duped it and gave it to [our Patrons](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) to cast the final vote in order to decide which 2 projects receive the donations.
17 |
18 | ## The results
19 | The spread of the results was surprising this time around - usually we have one or two clear winners. This time, although we had 2 winners, it was very close:
20 |
21 | {: .center}
22 | 
23 |
24 | So with 4 and 3 votes respectively, the winners of this round of donations were:
25 | * [postmarketOS](https://postmarketos.org/)
26 | * [European Digital Rights](https://edri.org/)
27 |
28 | 
29 |
30 | 
31 |
32 | ## Thank you
33 |
34 | Finally, we would like to say thanks to all of you - not just those who donate, but to everyone who makes Fosstodon what it is. We're are a bustling community of tech and open source enthusiasts and we continue to go from strength to strength.
35 |
36 | If you want to be help support Fosstodon financially, there are a number of ways to do so:
37 |
38 | {% include donate-buttons.html %}
39 |
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/_posts/2020/2020-09-11-community-spotlight.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Community Spotlight
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Have a project that you think needs some exposure? We might be able to help.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /community-spotlight/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | There's a steady flow of interesting projects and achievements floating around the [Fosstodon Community](https://fosstodon.org/). As such, we thought it would be fun to highlight and put them, here, on the [Fosstodon Hub](https://hub.fosstodon.org/).
14 |
15 | We've already reached out to a few community members to gauge their interest and the responses were very positive! While we're waiting on those members to put together some information on their projects, we'd like to extend the offer to the rest of the community.
16 |
17 | ### What qualifies as a project for the Community Spotlight?
18 |
19 | At the moment, we don't have any steadfast or hardline criteria for what would warrant a project highlight. Ideally, we'd like to see something that is FOSS or FOSS-related (although we're not limiting it to that). Examples could include something along the lines of [Ru's](https://fosstodon.org/@celia) Micropub Client or [Yarmo's](https://fosstodon.org/@yarmo) Keyoxide project (both, of which, we'll have more information on, later).
20 |
21 | ### Who can submit a project for review?
22 |
23 | We'd be happy to take suggestions from anyone but, ideally, we'd like to hear from the person that's working on the project since, ultimately, we'll need their permission to share about it. We'll also need that person to provide information to help us better explain what the project is and how it works.
24 |
25 | ### How can I notify the [Fosstodon Staff](/team) of my project?
26 |
27 | That's easy! You can send an email to [mail@fosstodon.org](mailto:mail@fosstodon.org) or just send a direct, group message to [Kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev), [Mike](https://fosstodon.org/@mike), and [Cooper](https://fosstodon.org/@cooper).
28 |
29 | *We can't wait to share about what you've been working on!*
30 |
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/covenant.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Our Covenant | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: The Fosstodon Team Covenant.
4 | permalink: /covenant/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | ## Fosstodon Team Covenant
8 | v0.1.0-2025-06-19
9 |
10 | The Fosstodon team is responsible for the upkeep of Fosstodon. While not all members of the team engage directly in all forms of moderation, all commit to the following:
11 |
12 | 1. Acknowledge our privileges. Above all else, taking on responsibility for Fosstodon grants us privileges and authority that others do not have. This is a pledge to use our privilege for good.
13 | 2. Aim for safety, prioritize those who are vulnerable, and consider impact before intentions. This includes believing people when their own actions show us who they are.
14 | 3. Consider our potential for ignorance, and trust those who bring concerns. We will verify before acting, and seek relevant advice when we have doubts.
15 | 4. Engage with respect, acknowledge the humanity of all involved, and take the minimum action required to have a positive impact on safety.
16 | 5. Bear the burden of criticism, be accountable for mistakes, and commit to meaningful action and change.
17 | 6. Moderate and lead with empathy, remember that individuals have different life experiences. Work to learn and let that guide your decisions.
18 | 7. Treat all internal discussions, user reports, and moderation decisions with appropriate confidentiality. Respect the privacy and dignity of those involved.
19 |
20 | Fosstodon moderation leans towards a one-strike policy, giving members one chance after infringing on our Code of Conduct before suspension. The exceptions for this are spam and threats to safety, credible or otherwise.
21 |
22 | Moderation of remote users may escalate to defederation of their instance, if the instance is a repeat source of abuse or known to federate TOS-violating content.
23 |
24 | Continued membership in the Fosstodon team requires acceptance and good-faith cooperation with the spirit of this document and the [Fosstodon Code of Conduct](https://hub.fosstodon.org/coc).
25 |
26 | All of us are responsible for holding each of us accountable. We commit to clear, honest, and compassionate communication, especially in moments of disagreement.
27 |
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/_posts/2019/2019-03-04-we-just-made-our-first-donation.md:
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1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We Just Made Our First Donation!
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Making donations to open source projects is a nice feeling. Hopefully this is our first of many!
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /we-just-made-our-first-donation/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | #### Because of all the amazing support we get from our Patrons over on [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon), today we have been able to make our first donation to an open source project.
14 |
15 | A couple weeks ago we published a shortlist of projects on our Patreon page that had been submitted by all members of Fosstodon. We then allowed our Patrons to cast a vote as to which project they would like our first donation to go to.
16 |
17 | ##### Mastodon was he outright winner with 31% of the total votes and because of the support we get from our Patrons, we were able to make a $150 donation to the Mastodon project!
18 |
19 | If you take a look at our [about page](/about) page, you will see details of our current funding, who we have donated to and when we did so.
20 |
21 | ## Have your say
22 |
23 | We said right from the very start that any additional funding that we receive from our Patrons will be put to good use and donated to other projects. Once we have a little pot saved up, we will make regular donations to projects of your choosing.
24 |
25 | If you're an active Patron, you will get to cast a vote as to which project gets the donation. **If you want to sign up to support Fosstodon and other projects, [you can use this link](https://patreon.com/fosstodon).** Our Patreon tiers start at just $1/month.
26 |
27 | ## Thank you!
28 |
29 | From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much guys! Fosstodon is going from strength to strength - we have to regularly upgrade our hosting package with [Masto.Host](https://masto.host) (which is a good thing) because you guys just keep on coming.
30 |
31 | If it wasn't for the financial support that you guys provided us with, we would struggle to keep the lights on at Fosstodon and we certainly wouldn't be able to donate to other projects.
32 |
33 | To us, that's the epitome of what a community is and long may it continue!
34 |
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/_posts/2020/2020-07-11-donation-results-round-3.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Donation Results - Round 3
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Here's the results of our third round of donations to open source projects.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /donation-results-round-3/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | **You know who's awesome?... all of you! Once again, we've been able to help a couple of open source projects, based on your continued [donations](/support) and support for Fosstodon!**
14 |
15 | A few weeks ago we [asked](https://hub.fosstodon.org/another-round-of-donations) for your help in deciding which open source projects should receive some Fosstodon love and support. After many submissions and a vote, by our [Patreons](https://www.patreon.com/fosstodon), we finally landed on 2 winners.
16 |
17 | We just made a $200.00 donation to [Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.org/) and another $200.00 donation to the [Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/).
18 |
19 | 
20 |
21 | 
22 |
23 | Our [about](https://hub.fosstodon.org/about) page contains details about our funding and past donations.
24 |
25 | ## Your say matters
26 |
27 | We've always said that any additional funding we receive from the Fosstodon Community will be used for supporting open source projects. Once we have enough saved up, we ask you to give us some input and vote on a project.
28 |
29 | If you're an active Patron, you will get to cast a vote as to which project gets the donation. **If you want to sign up to support Fosstodon and other projects, [you can use this link](https://www.patreon.com/fosstodon).** Our Patreon tiers start at just $1/month.
30 |
31 | ## Seriously, thanks... and we mean it
32 |
33 | You guys are the epitome of what a community should be. At the time of this post, we're right on the brink of 11,000 members and that is an amazing achievement. Our regular [Masto.Host](https://masto.host/) upgrades are a tribute to the Fosstodon Community's success and growth.
34 |
35 | **Thanks for your continued support and helping us make sure Fosstodon is one of the best Mastodon instances to be a part of!**
36 |
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/_posts/2025/2025-04-29-were-not-shutting-down.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Fosstodon is NOT Shutting Down
3 | author: kev
4 | description: Mike and Kev are stepping down, but that doesn't mean that Fosstodon is shutting down.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | Hey folks, Kev here. 👋🏻
9 |
10 | You may have read the posts that Mike and I wrote yesterday about us both being burned out and wanting to step down. So I wanted to write a quick post here to set the record straight on a couple of things, as there's some inaccurate information flying around as a result of those 2 posts.
11 |
12 | If you didn't read them, here's the links:
13 |
14 | * [https://mikestone.me/2025-04-28-do-what-you-love](https://mikestone.me/2025-04-28-do-what-you-love)
15 | * [https://kevquirk.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-the-fosstodon-drama](https://kevquirk.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-the-fosstodon-drama)
16 |
17 | I've not been checking in on Fosstodon regularly, since I wrote the post as it's overwhelming, but I have seen a few posts from people saying they're moving because Fosstodon is shutting down.
18 |
19 | **Fosstodon is NOT shutting down.**
20 |
21 | Although we're utterly burned out, Mike and I don't want this to be the end of Fosstodon. We would much rather hand over the batton to someone else in the community to take over and hopefully, do a better job than we did.
22 |
23 | We're currently in talks with [Gina](https://fosstodon.org/@Gina/). She's well liked on the instance, is very level headed and used to be a moderator, so she has a good idea of what to expect. Mike and I both trust her implicitly and think she would be a great custodian for Fosstodon 2.0.
24 |
25 | To be clear - there's still a lot of conversations to be had, and a lot of stuff to hand over, but our hope is that we will hand the reigns over to Gina, if she still wants it once we've given her a warts-and-all run down of everything that's involved.
26 |
27 | Gina has a tough task ahead of her - she will need to find new mods to bolster the existing team, and she will likely need to find at least 1 other admin to help her. If Gina decides it's not for her, Mike and I commited to 3 months of notice before anything happens. So during that time, we will look for someone else who might be interested.
28 |
29 |
Please don't email Mike and I offering your services. Although very kind, Mike and I have a specific shortlist of people we know and trust that we would approach.
30 |
31 | More to come over the next few days/weeks, but I wanted to reassure everyone that although Mike and I are moving on, it doesn't necessarily mean the end of Fosstodon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2023/2023-08-04-fosstodon-and-cloudflare.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Fosstodon and Cloudflare
3 | author: kev
4 | description: We've been asked a lot of questions about our use of Cloudflare, so here's our official stance.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 | {: .notice}
8 | As of 23rd August 2023, Fosstodon is fully migrated to Fastly, which mean we no longer use Cloudflare in any form, not even for DNS.
9 |
10 | Today, I went looking through the [#Fosstodon](https://fosstodon.org/tags/Fosstodon) feed, and in there I saw a number of comments about our use of Cloudflare and how that's really bad.
11 |
12 | Let me start by saying that using Cloudflare isn't great - [we've talked about this before](https://hub.fosstodon.org/moving-away-from-cloudflare/), but that was when we were much smaller and when we weren't the subject of [the occasional DDoS attack](https://hub.fosstodon.org/elon-twitter-post-mortem/).
13 |
14 | Yes, we use Cloudflare. We do so because their DDoS mitigation is effective and the alternatives are prohibitively expensive for us. We do, however, use Cloudflare in a very specific way:
15 |
16 | * We don't use their certificates, so they can't content inspect *any* traffic from Fosstodon
17 | * We don't use the Cloudflare CDN, we use [Bunny](https://bunny.net) instead
18 | * Under normal circumstances, we don't even proxy traffic through their service, so Cloudflare is just a DNS provider for us
19 | * If you want to prove this for yourself, ping `fosstodon.org` - it should resolve to `54.38.247.97` which isn't one of [Cloudflare's IP addresses](https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/ips/)
20 |
21 | When we're under attack, that changes though. We switch on the proxy and the anti-DDoS mitigations that Cloudflare offer. This is so we can maintain the service we provide to, like, 60,000 people. Once any attacks stop, we turn it all off again.
22 |
23 | {: .notice}
24 | When we're under attack and using their proxy, Cloudflare can, unfortunately, content inspect our traffic.
25 |
26 | ## Fastly
27 |
28 | After the wave of DDoS attacks we received a few months ago, Fastly reached out to us and kindly offered a complimentary account on their service so we could have DDoS mitigation and a CDN for free.
29 |
30 | This was an incredibly generous offer, which we took them up on. But the problem is, their service is extremely difficult to navigate, so neither myself or Mike have been able to work out how to configure it all.
31 |
32 | If any of you out there are familiar with Fastly's service, and are willing to help us configure it, please [get in touch](https://hub.fosstodon.org/contact/) as we would love to get off Cloudflare if possible.
33 |
34 | Until we can get Fastly working, Cloudflare will remain a necessary part of the Fosstodon stack, I'm afraid.
35 |
36 |
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/_posts/2019/2019-12-30-we-asked-you-answered.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We Asked, You Answered
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: Thank you all so, so much!
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /we-asked-you-answered/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | [In a previous post](/we-need-your-support-please) we asked our community for help in bolstering the funding of Fosstodon. We're really happy to say that our amazing community stepped up and then some!
14 |
15 | ## Previously
16 |
17 | Before the post went live, we explained that Fosstodon has around 7,000 members and it costs around $90/month to keep the lights on at Fosstodon HQ. Our amazing Patrons were kindly donating $87/month, of which Patreon take their cut.
18 |
19 | The meant that Fosstodon was operating at a loss, which Mike and I would need to fill. That's not a huge problem while it's a few bucks per month, but Fosstodon is the largest FOSS-based instance on the Fediverse and we're growing fast. So while it's only a few bucks deficit now, in a few months that number could be much more.
20 |
21 | Mike and I love what we have built with Fosstodon, but it takes a lot of time to manage. The last thing we wanted was for Fosstodon to become financial burden on us as it's a quick and easy way of sealing the fate of Fosstodon.
22 |
23 | ## Stepping Up
24 |
25 | The response from the Fosstodon community has been incredible. We knew we had an amazing community, but we didn't think you guys were _that_ amazing!
26 |
27 | Since publishing the post a number of things have happened:
28 |
29 | * We have sold out of all our stickers
30 | * Our Patreon funding has pretty much doubled to $162/month
31 | * Our LiberaPay pay funding has increased to nearly $3/month
32 | * We have received a number of ad-hoc donations from community members
33 |
34 | All of the above means that Fosstodon will continue to be well funded into the future. As always, [any surplus funding will be used to make donations to Open Source projects](/about), of which our community chooses.
35 |
36 | ## Thank you!
37 |
38 | Finally, we wanted to say thank you for the amazing generosity that this community has shown. Mike and I find it so humbling that our members enjoy Fosstodon enough that they're willing to put up some of their hard earned cash to help keep the lights on.
39 |
40 | Our commitment to the community hasn't changed - Fosstodon will always be free to use and Mike and I will always do what we can to keep the lights on where possible. This amazing response means that Fosstodon continues to have a bright future. Thank you, everyone!
41 |
42 | **If you want to help support Fosstodon, [you can do so here](/support).**
43 |
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/support.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Support Fosstodon
3 | description: Information on how you can help keep the lights on.
4 | permalink: /support/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | # Support Us
8 |
9 | Running a project like Fosstodon [can be expensive](/finances/) and take a lot of time. We have a fantastic team of volunteers to help moderate and manage Fosstodon, but if you want to help support the project financially you can do so in a number of ways:
10 |
11 | {% include donate-buttons.html %}
12 |
13 |
14 | ## Stickers
15 |
16 | 
17 |
18 | If you want to buy some Fosstodon stickers for your laptop (or anywhere else you fancy sticking them) you can buy them below. By purchasing Fosstodon stickers, not only will you have some really cool swag, but you will also be helping to support the project.
19 |
20 | The stickers measure approximately 7.5cm (3") across and 10cm (4") high.
21 |
22 | We would like to thank Fosstodon member, [Jens Reuterberg](https://fosstodon.org/@ohyran), for kindly donating his time and creating this really cool design.
23 |
24 | Buy Stickers Now -->
25 |
26 | ## Other ways to support us
27 |
28 | We don't just need financial support. If you don't want to support us financially, that's absolutely fine - Fosstodon is a free service and always will be.
29 |
30 | If you're a Fosstodon member and want to contribute to the project without your wallet, here are some ideas:
31 |
32 | * Report any posts that you feel violate our [CoC](/coc/).
33 | * Keep sharing interesting posts that spark discussion and debate.
34 | * Be excellent to each other.
35 |
36 | ## Our Promise to you
37 |
38 | The last thing you want to see when you put your own money into a project is that money wasted or have that project disappear overnight without a trace. We understand that, and we want to be as transparent about this as possible.
39 |
40 | We keep 6 months of funding in our account to keep the lights on at Fosstodon. Any funds above and beyond that are collected and donated to a project chosen by our contributors.
41 |
42 | If for some reason we decide to shutdown Fosstodon, we will stop taking contributions immediately and use the funds already in our account to fund the service for the full 6 months remaining. That should give everybody an opportunity to find a new home in the Fediverse.
43 |
44 | We love our community here at Fosstodon, and we have no plans to hit the Off switch, but because we know nothing can last forever we want to assure you that we won't just disappear and leave you high and dry.
45 |
46 | ## Thank you
47 |
48 | Finally, we wanted to end this page with a quick thank you. The support that the community gives us, both financially and otherwise, really helps Fosstodon to continue to go from strength to strength.
49 |
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/_posts/2019/2019-08-02-moderation-update.md:
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1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Moderation Update
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: An update on how we're moderating things in our little corner of the fediverse.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /moderation-update/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | A few weeks ago, we decided it was time to make some changes to the Fosstodon team and how we manage things around here. We have a really strong team of moderators and also Mike and Kev carry out some moderation duties, as admins.
14 |
15 | However, we realised that moderation and administration are two different roles. So we have decided to separate those duties into 2 distinct roles. This meant that Mike and Kev would no longer be carrying out any moderation tasks.
16 |
17 | ## New Moderators
18 |
19 | With [Mike](https://fosstodon.org/@mike) and [Kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev) stepping down as moderators, this left a gap as we try to stick to a *follow the sun* process with regards to moderation. This means that we try to have moderators spread out across the globe, so that there's usually someone from the team around.
20 |
21 | We already have [CodeSections](https://fosstodon.org/@codesections), [Kelbot](https://fosstodon.org/@kelbot) and [Lee](https://fosstodon.org/@lee8oi) covering the US time zone, so we were good there, even without Mike. We also have [Joseph](https://fosstodon.org/@joseph) in Asia and since Asia has our fewest members, 1 moderator in that time zone is fine.
22 |
23 | Kev is based in the UK, so there was a gap there as we have a lot of members in Europe. So we decided to replace both Mike and Kev with moderators from a similar time zone as Kev.
24 |
25 | #### With that in mind, we would like to officially welcome both [Gina](https://fosstodon.org/@gina) and [Jens](https://fosstodon.org/@ohyran) to the Fosstodon moderation team.
26 |
27 | Both Gina and Jens are based in Europe, but more importantly, they're both well respected and well liked members of the community. We're thrilled to have them on the team!
28 |
29 | ## Why separate?
30 |
31 | Finally, we wanted to quickly touch on why we have decided to separate the roles of administration on moderation. By doing this, it will give the mods more freedom to act as they see fit, without Mike and Kev having to oversee (not that they had to anyway). It will also allow Mike and Kev to focus on growing Fosstodon, rather than dealing with moderation tasks.
32 |
33 | From this point on Mike and Kev will not process any reports. They will be on hand to provide assistance and advice to the mods, but the final decision on which action to take will always be the mods.
34 |
35 | If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please use the [contact us](/contact) page, or reach out to one of the team in Mastodon.
36 |
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/_posts/2022/2022-11-13-twitter-fallout-round-2.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Fosstodon vs Twitter - Round 2
3 | author: kev
4 | description: Fosstodon has been dealing with the great Twitter migration, again. Here's an account of what happened from our perspective.
5 | permalink: /fosstodon-vs-twitter-round-2/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 | Woooooh! It's been a *crazy* few weeks at Fosstodon HQ. If you've been living under a rock (or are just not interested) Elon Musk, or better known as *Melon Tusk* on the fediverse, has taken over Twitter and looks to be on a mission to ruin the platform even more.
9 |
10 | Because of this, people have been flocking to Mastodon in their droves, and since Fosstodon is one of the biggest tech-focussed instances on the fediverse, we've seen **A LOT** of that traffic.
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 | ## TL;DR
15 | If you don't want to read about the back story, here's the TL;DR (too long, didn't read):
16 | * Over the last 10 days we have served over 140 *million* requests
17 | * The number of members on Fosstodon has doubled from 20,000 to 40,000+
18 | * All of [the team](/team) have been pulling a second full-time job to cope with the demand. So much so that we ended up taking shifts!
19 | * We have had to do a number of server upgrades, which has resulted in our hosting costs rising from around $250/month to $1,000/month
20 | * Mike and I were [interviewed for WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-users-mastodon-meltdown/)
21 | * Microsoft's lawyers reached out to us to take down an account, clearly a sign that we've made it 🤪
22 | * Our community have been fantastically understanding by supporting us through all the slow downs and outages, as we've have constantly fought to keep the lights on, and also with their financial support. **Thank you, everyone.**
23 |
24 | Actually, I don't really need to go into anymore detail, those are all the salient points. Needless to say it's been a horrendous few weeks and we're still seeing a lot of traffic, but that may just be the new norm.
25 |
26 | I've updated [our funding page](/about/#current-funding) with a breakdown of what our costs and funding currently look like. Thanks to all the financial support, we have managed to keep our head above water. Just about.
27 |
28 | We currently have 4.7 months worth of funding, so we're still a ways off our [6 month funding target](/longevity-and-fosstodon/). If you want to throw a few bucks into the tip jar, we'd be every so grateful:
29 |
30 | {% include donate-buttons.html %}
31 |
32 | ## Wrapping up
33 |
34 | Thanks to Melon Tusk, things on Fosstodon look brighter than ever. We have a growing and even more diverse community of passionate techies, and we're really proud of that.
35 |
36 | Finally, I wanted to say thanks to all of you, our members, for the continued support. Fosstodon would be nothing without you fine people. ❤️
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-04-01-moving-away-from-cloudflare.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Moving Away From Cloudflare
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: A lot of people in open source don't like Cloudflare, so we stopped using it.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /moving-away-from-cloudflare/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | We were recently asked by a member of our community why we were using Cloudflare as the [Content Delivery Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network) for Fosstodon.
14 |
15 | This was a valid concern considering the [numerous privacy concerns](https://git.nixnet.xyz/you/stop_cloudflare) that many people have when it comes to Cloudflare, especially when it comes to their free TLS certificates and what is basically MiTM TLS inspection.
16 |
17 | Now, we want to be *very* clear here **we do not use Cloudflare for our TLS certificate**. That is provided by Let's Encrypt. The only data that is handled by the Cloudflare CDN are the media attachments that our users post.
18 |
19 | However, when our members raise a concern, we listen and we try to come up with a solution. We host Fosstodon with [Masto.Host](https://masto.host), which uses the Cloudflare CDN for media by default. Being the great service provider that they are, they give their customers the option to use a different CDN. So we started looking into alternatives...
20 |
21 | ## BunnyCDN
22 |
23 | Kev already uses BunnyCDN for the CDN on his personal website - they're a known quantity and have a good reputation. So we decided to migrate from Cloudflare to BunnyCDN.
24 |
25 | Now, BunnyCDN isn't a free service and it may get quite expensive for us to host with them, but we will have to wait and see. We're estimating that the additional cost for BunnyCDN will be around $20/month based on our current bandwidth usage.
26 |
27 | Fosstodon is a popular instance, and we generate a lot of traffic. As we grow, that traffic will grow too. At the moment we're funded pretty well and have enough in the donation pot to absorb this additional cost, but if you want to help chip in to keep Fosstodon alive you can [help support us](/support) in a number of ways.
28 |
29 | ## Conclusion
30 |
31 | We will always take the feedback we receive from our community seriously, and we really hope this post proves that.
32 |
33 | BunnyCDN is live and serving your content right now. Hopefully the transition has been a seamless one for you. If you do notice a slight slowdown over the next few days, please bear with us as it will take some time for the cache to build up across the new CDN.
34 |
35 | 
36 |
37 | We will, of course, keep you guys update about how we're finding BunnyCDN. Also, the details of all our funding and how we use can be found on [our about page](/about).
38 |
39 | **If you have any feedback, please reach out to one of the team, or [contact us](/contact).**
40 |
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/_posts/2021/2021-06-29-Wow...just wow....md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Wow...just wow...
3 | author: cooper
4 | description: Recently, we asked for your support to make sure our overhead was covered and to help us prepare for anticipated growth.
5 | permalink: /wow-just-wow/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | ## You answered the call
10 |
11 | The Fosstodon Community's response was staggering! We received a few one time donations, in addition to increasing our monthly support via Liberpay and Patreon. Not only that but, we even had people show support that aren't part of Fosstodon! How incredible is that!? If you didn't get a chance to show some support, you can look [here](https://hub.fosstodon.org/support/) for ways to help out.
12 |
13 | ## How's it looking?
14 |
15 | At the time of our last hub post we were receiving $130.00/month with an overhead of $115.00/month. Since then, our Liberpay and Patreon monthly support has increased to $309.60! This will allow us to make preparations for an anticipated increase in monthly expenses, as the community grows and overhead costs increase (CDN traffic, server specs, etc). Here's a [link](https://hub.fosstodon.org/about/#current-funding) to a summary of our current funding and expenses.
16 |
17 | ## What about the excess?
18 |
19 | As always, any surplus funds (above our 6 month operating expense target) will be used for supporting open source projects. Once we have enough saved up, we will ask you to give us some input and vote on a project.
20 |
21 | If you’re an active Patron, you'll have the opportunity to cast a vote as to which project(s) will receive the donation(s). If you want to sign up to support Fosstodon and other projects, you can use this [link](https://hub.fosstodon.org/support/). Our Patreon tiers start at just $1/month.
22 |
23 | ## Where do we go from here?
24 |
25 | Well, that's entirely up to you. At the current rate, along with the one-time donations, we've already been able to hit our 6 month operating cost goal. Currently, we're looking over some improvements and upgrades we've anticipated for the community, based on increasing member numbers and traffic. When those changes become necessary, we'll want to ensure we're covering 6 months of the updated expenses, as well. If we continue to take on more supporters, we'll be able to meet those goals sooner and start supporting more open source projects. Beyond that, more funding equals more projects supported. It'll be like a continuous circle of Fosstodon Community awesomeness!
26 |
27 | ## Final thoughts
28 |
29 | As the community is preparing to crest the 19,000 member milestone, the Fosstodon Staff couldn't be more humbled from the support that has been shown by the community. We are so proud to be part of such an amazing family (yes, you're all like a massive family of really great people). We're glad you chose to be part of this with us as we continue to grow and support free and open source projects.
30 |
31 | Thanks for your continued support and helping us make sure Fosstodon is one of the best Mastodon instances to be part of!
32 |
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/_includes/donate-buttons.html:
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1 |
6 |
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/_posts/2019/2019-06-07-longevity-and-fosstodon.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Longevity and Fosstodon
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: We're not planning on going anywhere, but if we do, we have a plan.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /longevity-and-fosstodon/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Mastodon is great, but one of the issues with a federated social network such as this, is that users need to be sure their instance isn't going to disappear overnight. This has happened on a number of occasions to my knowledge, and it leaves the instance's members high and dry.
14 |
15 | They then have to find a new instance, migrate and inform all of their old followers. Problem is, if their old instance is already gone, there's no way for them to inform their followers on the old instance.
16 |
17 | Bad times all round, I think you will agree.
18 |
19 | This has spawned a number of questions from our members around Fosstodon’s future and how it would look if we were to shut down the instance.
20 |
21 | ## Our commitment to you
22 |
23 | First of all, we do not intend on shutting Fosstodon down any time soon. Mike and I both have full admin access to the instance, the web hosting, the domain hosting and DNS config, the PayPal account and everything else in between.
24 |
25 | This prevents the 'hit by a bus' scenario, but it also provides bandwidth. Managing an instance is a lot of work, so Mike and I both share the workload, and we have a team of awesome moderators that help keep the community in check (not that it really needs it as you're all awesome).
26 |
27 | ### Funding
28 |
29 | The project is well funded, you can [see the details on our about page](/about). We currently receive more money from our [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) account that it costs us to run the instance. This means that Mike and I don't have the financial overhead of keeping the instance going (although we do both contribute via Patreon every month).
30 |
31 | Any additional funds are collected and then donated to an open source project of the community's choosing.
32 |
33 | ### What if we do decide to close down?
34 |
35 | So we're good in terms of staffing and finances, so it's very unlikely that Fosstodon will close down. However, if we do decide to close the instance down, **our commitment to you is that we will provide at least 3 months notice**.
36 |
37 | This should give our members enough time to find a new instance, migrate and ensure their followers know about it too. We hope that in the future a full migration option will be added to Mastodon, so users can fully migrate their accounts. In lieu of that process though, we will always do what we can to support our members.
38 |
39 | ## Conclusion
40 |
41 | Obviously Mike and I want Fosstodon to continue to grow from strength to strength, so we have no intentions of shutting Fosstodon down. We're healthy in terms of finances and staffing, and if the worst was to happen, we would give you guys plenty of notice.
42 |
43 | Hopefully this post will help to allay any concerns our members have. **TL;DR - we got your back!**
44 |
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/_posts/2022/2022-08-02-domain-expired.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Our Domain Expired and it Took Out All Our Services
3 | author: kev
4 | description: A couple of days ago fosstodon.org expired and all our services went down. Here's how it happened.
5 | permalink: /our-domain-expired/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | It's Saturday evening. It's been a busy day, what with the kids being off school and all. My wife and I are preparing dinner for the family and honestly, I can't be bothered; all I want to do is sit on the sofa and relax.
10 |
11 | Something compelled me to check my phone, where I saw an email from our community manager, [Cooper](https://fosstodon.org/@cooper) that said...
12 |
13 | > Hey bud,
14 | >
15 | > I think we might have an issue with our domain provider. Nothing is resolving/connecting on the naked domain or any of the subs (Mattermost, Hub, etc).
16 | >
17 | > Best Regards,
18 | >
19 | > Matt Cooper
20 |
21 | So I made my excuses to my wife, booted up my laptop and checked myself. Yep, it was all down.
22 |
23 | **Bollocks!**
24 |
25 | My first thought was maybe it was a hosting problem, but Cooper has already said our [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) Mattermost server was down, as well as this very Hub that you're reading now. So it couldn't have been a hosting issue, as they're all hosted in different places.
26 |
27 | *It must be DNS*, I thought. So I fired up my terminal to check...
28 |
29 | ```
30 | % host -a fosstodon.org
31 | Trying "fosstodon.org"
32 | Trying "fosstodon.org"
33 | Host fosstodon.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
34 | ```
35 |
36 | **Double bollocks!**
37 |
38 | *Where the hell has our DNS gone?* Our domain and DNS are provided by NameCheap, so I logged into our account only to find that `fosstodon.org` was listed as `EXPIRED`.
39 |
40 | **TRIPLE BOLLOCKS!**
41 |
42 | ## Grace period
43 | Luckily for me, the domain had *just* expired and we were still within our grace period, so we hadn't lost the domain. Can you imagine what would have happened if someone else had nabbed it!
44 |
45 | I re-registered the domain as quickly as I possibly could, and 15 minutes or so later, our services started coming back up. *Fantastic!* Crisis averted.
46 |
47 | ### But how did this happen?
48 | Well, it's very simple, dear reader. **I'm an idiot.** I had my personal card assigned to the account, and it expired a few months back. Needless to say I didn't update the card details, so the domain couldn't renew.
49 |
50 | I don't *think* I received any alerts about it. But saying that, I own lots of domains and get emails about renewals all the time, so it's likely I just dismissed the email.
51 |
52 | ## Fixing the problem
53 | Instead of updating my card and risking being back in this situation when my current card expires, I flipped the payment service to PayPal, which is where all our funds are stored anyway. So hopefully, this won't happen again.
54 |
55 | Apologies for the completely preventable outage, folks. Yes, I'm an idiot. Yes, this was avoidable. Yes, I shouldn't be trusted with this kind of thing.
56 |
57 | {: .notice}
58 | If you want to help keep the lights on at Fosstodon HQ, you can [support the project here](/support).
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/_posts/2019/2019-12-17-we-need-your-support-please.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We Need Your Support Please
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: We want to make sure Fosstodon stays around for the foreseeable future, but we need your help.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /we-need-your-support-please/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | #### Fosstodon has nearly 7,000 members!
14 |
15 | I think it's fair to say that when Mike and I started Fosstodon back in 2017, we didn't think we would be _the_ biggest FOSS based instance on the Fediverse. That's just awesome and we love the fact that our little corner of the Fediverse is growing so well.
16 |
17 | However, as our community grows, our hosting requirements do too. Over the next day or so we will be upgrading our servers again to ensure we continue to have the great performance and uptime that our members have come to expect from us. The problem is, as the servers grow, so do the hosting costs. After the upgrade our running costs will be approximately $90 per month. I'm sure most of you will agree that this is quite a lot of money for something that started out as a pet project for two guys.
18 |
19 | ## We need your help
20 |
21 | Our monthly Patreon income (which includes monthly donations from both Mike and I) is $87. So we're already running Fosstodon at a loss. We're also growing fast, so the next time we need to upgrade, that loss is going to get bigger and bigger. A loss which Mike and I will need to fund personally, and we will be happy to do so as we're so proud of what we have all built with Fosstodon.
22 |
23 | **That $87/month, which Patreon take a cut out of, comes from 30 glorious Fosstodonians - but that is just 0.42% of our members.**
24 |
25 | We said in our post about [the longevity of Fosstodon](/longevity-and-fosstodon) that we would like to keep 6 months of hosting fees as a float, then anything over and above this will be donated to open source projects. With our Patreon income being so close to our expenditure, we don't think we will be able to donate to other projects if our income doesn't increase inline with our size.
26 |
27 | Like I said, we currently receive funding from 0.42% of our members. If just 2% of our members signed up for our lowest Patreon tier of $1/month, we would be all set for the foreseeable future.
28 |
29 | We currently have around 10 months worth of funding in our Paypal account, so we're not desperate yet, but we wanted to canvas for help before we get desperate. The last thing we want to see is this incredible community of fantastic people fall by the wayside.
30 |
31 | #### If you feel you get enjoyment from Fosstodon and can spare just $1/month, it really would make a huge difference to the longevity of the Fosstodon project.
32 |
33 | [ ](https://liberapay.com/fosstodon)
34 |
35 | [](https://patreon.com/fosstodon)
36 |
37 | [](https://paypal.me/kevquirk)
38 |
39 | ## Thank you
40 |
41 | We wanted to end this post with a quick thank you to **all** of our members, whether you donate or not, Fosstodon would literally be nothing without you guys. Thank you all for everything that you do, and remember, **be excellent to each other.**
42 |
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/financial.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Finances | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: Where Our Money Goes And How To Support Us
4 | permalink: /finances/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | ## Thank you!!
8 |
9 | We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our community members who have generously contributed through donations. Your support means the world to us. We want to emphasize that while we greatly appreciate any donations, you should never feel obligated in any way. Your participation in our community, whether through contributions or simply being a part of it, is valued above all else. We are here to provide a space that you can enjoy, and your involvement is a choice, not obligation. Thank you for being a vital part of our community.
10 |
11 | ## How we assign funds
12 |
13 | When you make a donation, either by [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) or [PayPal](https://paypal.me/FosstodonFoundation), it eventually ends up in our PayPal account. With this funding we do a couple of things:
14 |
15 | 1. We keep a 6 month float of running costs; so we know we have funding in place should we need extra cash for things like an unexpected server upgrade.
16 | 2. Anything over and above our running costs is accumulated in to donations to open source projects that our Patrons get to choose. We tend to save these funds up so we can make meaningful donations – usually a minimum of $100/donation.
17 |
18 | ## Project donations process
19 |
20 | Once we have enough funds saved up to make a donation to a project, we will create a Patron-only post on our Patreon page, which include details on how you can recommend a project for donation.
21 |
22 | Once we have some recommendations from our Patrons, [the team](/team) will create a short list. Once the short list is created, we will create a survey so all of our members can vote on which project should get the donation.
23 |
24 | Again, this will stay open for a week and the project with the most votes at the end will get the donation.
25 |
26 | We will then post details of any donations made to this page.
27 |
28 | ## Current running costs
29 |
30 | | Details | Amount (USD) |
31 | |:------------------------------:|:------------:|
32 | | Fosstodon hosting: | $2,050 |
33 | | DNS hosting: | $20.00 |
34 | | Mattermost server: | $15.00 |
35 | | Translation server: | $8.00 |
36 | | Bitwarden: | $5.00 |
37 | | **Current monthly operating costs:** | **$2,098** |
38 |
39 | ### Donations we have made
40 |
41 | | Donation Recipient | Date | Donation Amount |
42 | |:------------------:|:----:|:---------------:|
43 | | Mastodon | 04 Mar 19 | $150 |
44 | | Elementary OS | 17 Jun 19 | $100 |
45 | | Let's Encrypt | 17 Jun 19 | $100 |
46 | | Pixelfed | 11 Jul 20 | $200 |
47 | | Software Freedom Conservancy | 11 Jul 20 | $200 |
48 | | Electronic Frontier Foundation | 19 Nov 20 | $200 |
49 | | Tor Project | 19 Nov 20 | $200 |
50 | | postmarketOS | 24 Nov 21 | $300 |
51 | | European Digital Rights | 24 Nov 21 | $300 |
52 | | Mstdn.social | 20 July 24 | $412 |
53 |
54 | **Total donations made: $2,162**
55 |
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/_posts/2025/2025-06-04-brandon-and-kris-join-new-admins.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Brandon and Kris joining as admins
3 | author: gina
4 | description: Announcing Brandon and Kris as two additional admins to the Fosstodon team
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | Hi all, 👋
9 |
10 | We're very happy to announce that our call for a fellow admin has yielded not 1, but 2 very qualified people from our community. 🥳🥳 Brandon and Kris will be stepping up as admins, together with Gina. They'll introduce themselves in this post.
11 |
12 | ## An intro from Brandon
13 |
14 | Hey everyone, I'm [Brandon](https://fosstodon.org/@btp).
15 |
16 | I'll start with a little bit about myself. I'm a 35 year old NOC sys admin from Colorado living with my wonderful life partner and our adorable dog [Millie](https://pixelfed.social/p/bdont/814192090567300607). I'm new to the tech world professionally, getting my current position three years ago, and currently working towards a software developer role. Previously I was a political science major, but never finished my degree. I'd like to get back to school and pivot to a comp sci degree one day. Most of my free time is spent playing ttrpgs, Magic: The Gathering, watching campy sitcoms, or working on personal projects.
17 |
18 | Fosstodon is the first instance I joined after creating my first fediverse account on mastodon.social. The passionate and friendly community drew me in, and I've met great pocket friends here that I still chat with today. After Kev and Mike stepped down, I wanted to do my part to keep this community alive and show the rest of the fediverse the welcoming and friendly place Fosstodon really is, and I'm glad that Gina and the rest of the team put their trust me to take on a co-admin role. I hope our users here and across other instances will as well. I'll do my best to not let you down.
19 |
20 | I share Gina's vision for Fosstodon as a place for FOSS enthusiasts, tinkerers, hobbyests, and anyone else who's passionate about software and technology to come and share it with the rest of the fediverse and the internet. We also want to continue to make our instance a safer place; to do this, we're going to continue to take good-faith feedback, constructive criticism, and listen to what the users have to say.
21 |
22 |
23 | ## An intro from Kris
24 |
25 | Hello friends, I'm [Kris](https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain)
26 |
27 | A little bit about me. I'm a 51 year old dad living in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon in the beautilful Pacific Northwest. I am dedicated family man, husband, and father, who practices Buddhism and has a daily meditation practice. I enjoy gardening, powerlifting, exploring new places to see and to eat with my family, and supporting our local football/soccer team, the Portland Thorns.
28 |
29 | Professionally, I am the Community Manager for the OpenSearch Project, OpenSearch Software Foundation, and technical steering committee. I've been in the tech world for a long time with experience in community engagement, digital marketing, support, and release management. For the past few years, I've been able to travel the world and meet so many people from the open source community either at conferences or the global user group community we've been building. The open source world is a truly unique place.
30 |
31 | I find connecting people through community to be very fulfilling and the Fosstodon community is a great place to do this. I want to continue to make Fosstodon a safe environment for all of us to meet, to share ideas, and to get to know one another.
32 |
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/_posts/2025/2025-07-01-introducing-the-fosstodon-foundation.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Introducing the Fosstodon Foundation
3 | author: kris
4 | description: Announcing the Fosstodon Foundation!
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | ### Introducing the Fosstodon Foundation
9 |
10 | Today we are excited to share some news for the open source and decentralized community: the establishment of the Fosstodon Foundation. 🥳 The foundation is dedicated to fos(s)tering a friendly, inclusive, online space for open source people to come together, exchange ideas, and share common interests.
11 |
12 | The newly formed Fosstodon Foundation formalizes this mission, ensuring the community has the legal and organizational structure to grow sustainably. The core objectives include:
13 |
14 | - Enabling a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment for discussions about open-source software, technology, and digital culture.
15 | - Supporting the fediverse by maintaining a community-driven space.
16 | - Providing financial and operational stability through donations, grants, and other funding mechanisms.
17 | - Being a place where like-minded people share with one another in the spirit of open source collaboration.
18 |
19 |
20 | ### Why a Foundation matters
21 |
22 | Foundations play a crucial role in open source and decentralized projects. They provide governance, financial oversight, and legal protection; all of which help communities thrive without relying on corporate ownership. By establishing the Fosstodon Foundation, we are ensuring that:
23 |
24 | - Fosstodon remains independent and aligned with its original mission.
25 | - Donations and funding are managed transparently, with clear financial reporting.
26 | - Long-term sustainability is prioritized, so Fosstodon users can happily toot for years to come.
27 |
28 |
29 | ### The near future
30 |
31 | The foundation’s board members ([Gina Plat](https://fosstodon.org/@gina), [Kris Freedain](https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain), and [Brandon Phillips](https://fosstodon.org/@btp)) will oversee governance, financial management, and strategic direction.
32 |
33 | - Financial accountability: Annual statements will be prepared by the board.
34 | - Responsible governance: As a legally recognized nonprofit, Fosstodon operates under statutes that define our mission, structure, and responsibilities. Amendments to these statutes require a two-thirds majority vote.
35 | - Transparency in dissolution: A foundation means easier continuity. If the foundation should ever wind down, Fosstodon commits itself to a 6 month operational period and will distribute remaining funds among other open source projects.
36 | - Community-driven decisions: More on this very soon!
37 |
38 | ### We’re glad you’re here
39 |
40 | We’re very excited that Fosstodon has become an inclusive hub for developers, sysadmins, OSPO-members, community managers, and FOSS enthusiasts. With this new foundation in place, our community is set up for long-term sustainability, and can grow further with stability, transparency, and inclusivity at its core.
41 |
42 | If you’re passionate about open source, decentralized tech, or just want a friendly corner of the internet to discuss nerdy things, we encourage you to check out Fosstodon and consider supporting the foundation’s work.
43 |
44 | Here’s to the future of our community! 🥂
45 |
46 |
47 | Signed,
48 | [Gina Plat](https://fosstodon.org/@gina)
49 | [Kris Freedain](https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain)
50 | [Brandon Phillips](https://fosstodon.org/@btp)
51 |
52 | {% include pdf.html file="Deed_of_Incorporation_Fosstodon_EN.pdf" %}
53 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-04-13-we-need-a-community-manager.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We Need A Community Manager
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: We're growing the team and Fosstodon needs a Community Manager. You interested?
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /we-need-a-community-manager/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Fosstodon is growing fast. When we first started back in August 2017, Mike and I were pretty sure that Fosstodon would end up being a niche instance with me, him and maybe a handful of other FOSS enthusiasts.
14 |
15 | Fast forward nearly 3 years, we're the largest Linux/Open Source technology instance on the Fediverse, with nearly 9,000 members and growing. Fast.
16 |
17 | This is great; Mike and I are so proud of the community we have here on Fosstodon, but as the instance grows, so should our team. We have discussed it and decided **we need a community manager at Fosstodon**.
18 |
19 | ## What is a community manager?
20 |
21 | The term *Community Manager* means different things to different teams. For us, it's someone who can help us grow Fosstodon by keeping the community engaged, interested and wanting more.
22 |
23 | But what does that look like? Well, we would expect the Community Manager to be able to come up with interesting posts, challenges, questions & hashtags to engage the community on Fosstodon. We would also like the Community Manager to maintain our Patreon page to make sure our amazing patrons are getting something back from us in exchange for their hard earned cash.
24 |
25 | We would also like the Community Manager to manage the donations system so that any additional funding goes to worthy open source projects.
26 |
27 | Finally, we want to Community Manager to bring their own ideas - this list is by no means exhaustive. We need someone with a creative mind that can come up with much more interesting ideas that what I've listed here. It's an open book!
28 |
29 | ## Why do you need a community manager?
30 |
31 | Well, Mike and I are extremely busy. We have day jobs, families and personal things that we need to attend to. Then there's all the Fosstodon admin - managing member questions, engaging with the community and a tonne of other stuff - I could go on forever. That doesn't leave time for much else.
32 |
33 | Because of this, Mike and I feel like we have been neglecting the Fosstodon community a little recently, and that has to stop. So we put our heads together and decided that having someone dedicated to growing, managing and engaging with the community would be a huge help to us and a massive benefit to Fosstodon in general.
34 |
35 | ## What's in it for me?
36 |
37 | Other than copious amounts of satisfaction from being involved in something awesome and having a seat at the Fosstodon table? Not a lot unfortunately. This would be purely on a volunteer basis, you would be working extremely closely with both Mike and myself to discuss new ideas and how best to implement them.
38 |
39 | Oh, you get an @fosstodon.org email address, and we will probably throw some stickers in for you too! :-)
40 |
41 | *By the way, if you want to buy some stickers for yourself, [take a look here](/support).*
42 |
43 | ## How do I apply?
44 |
45 | We have created a simple online form to fill in. It should take no more than 5 minutes to complete. That will email us your application. Once we have it, we will review the application, and if we want to move things forward, we will be in touch.
46 |
47 | **Applications for the community manager position are now closed.**
48 |
49 | If you have any questions about this role, feel free to email both Mike and myself at **mail [at] fosstodon [dot] org**. Or you could just DM us Mastodon.
50 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2023/2023-06-20-facebook-fosstodon-fedi.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Facebook, Fosstodon & The Fediverse
3 | author: kev
4 | description: This is Fosstodon's official stance on the whole Facebook joining the Fediverse debacle.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | {: .notice}
9 | **TL;DR (if you can't be bothered reading all of the below)** - Fosstodon will wait and see what happens, but if Facebook's new service introduces any issues that could negatively impact our users, we will defederate.
10 |
11 | Mike and I have been asked, multiple times, about what Fosstodon's position is on Facebook potentially joining the Fediverse.
12 |
13 | If you're not aware, the TL;DR is that Facebook, or their parent company, Meta, is planning to create a Twitter clone that will support ActivityPub ([more here](https://www.lifewire.com/how-metas-new-project-p92-could-deliver-the-killing-blow-to-twitter-7255582)). That means that Facebook, or some semblance of it, **could** be coming to a Mastodon instance near you.
14 |
15 | Needless to say, this has a lot of folk on Mastodon a little worried - hence the constant stream of messages to myself and Mike asking what we, as admins of Fosstodon, plan to do about it.
16 |
17 | ## Fosstodon's position
18 |
19 | Truth is, there isn't that much info out there on how this thing will actually work, or what it will be capable of. Lots of people seem to be concerned about Facebook "getting their info". Fact is, they can do that now if they really want to - it would be trivial for Facebook to stand something up that hoovers up all the public data that's on the Fediverse, via API.
20 |
21 | And that's the clincher here - **it's all public data**. So the best advice I can give if you're concerned about your data, is lock down your account and don't post publicly.
22 |
23 | All that being said, here's what we plan to do **if** this thing ever sees the light of day:
24 | * As a team, we will review what the service is capable of and what advantages/disadvantages such a service will bring to the Fediverse
25 | * We will then make a determination on whether we will defederate that service
26 | * We will **NOT** jump on the bandwagon, or partake in the rumour mill that seems to be plaguing the Fediverse at the moment
27 |
28 | It's important to say that neither myself or Mike like anything that Facebook stands for. Neither of us use it, and both of us go to great lengths to avoid it when browsing the web. So if this service introduces **any** issues that could negatively impact our users, we will defederate.
29 |
30 | However, we don't know what this thing is yet. Hell, we don't even know if this thing will actually *exist* yet. So let's just wait and see.
31 |
32 | What if this thing ends up being a service that can allow you to communicate with your friends who still use Facebook, via the Fedi, in a privacy respecting manner. That would be pretty cool, I think; especially when you consider that one of the main concerns with new users on the Fedi is that they can't find their friends.
33 |
34 | We all know Facebook is a [privacy vortex of doom](https://kevquirk.com/why-you-shouldnt-use-facebook) so I doubt that would ever happen, but we shall see...
35 |
36 | ## Update 24 June 2023
37 |
38 | Mike and I received an email from a Meta representative about an *"off the record conversation"* that they would like us to attend. We politely declined - for transparancy, the original email and my reply is below.
39 |
40 | I'd just like to add that our position on the whole Facebook thing hasn't changed - we're not going to jump on the bandwagon, or take any action at this point. We're just not interested in having any kind of conversations with Meta prior to them (potentially) joining the Fediverse.
41 |
42 | 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/team.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: The Team | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: A list of the Fosstodon team members and their roles.
4 | permalink: /team/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | # Meet The Team
8 |
9 | It takes a lot of work to keep the Fosstodon running. Whether that's moderating reports, providing advice to moderators, creating and editing documentation, or just keeping the lights on and the wheels turning.
10 |
11 | This page lists all the amazing volunteers that keep this ship afloat.
12 |
13 | ## Admins
14 |
15 | Admins are responsible for all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes - like responding to DDoS attacks, [large influxes of users](https://hub.fosstodon.org/elon-twitter-post-mortem/) and working with vendors like [Masto.host](https://masto.host) and [Fastly](https://fastly.com), to improve the service for all our members.
16 |
17 | {% for member in site.data.admins %}
18 |
24 | {% endfor %}
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 | ## Senior Moderators
29 |
30 | Our Senior Moderators play a crucial role in offering support and guidance to the moderation team, in addition to crafting and enhancing the documentation that accompanies Fosstodon, such as [our Code of Conduct](https://hub.fosstodon.org/coc) and moderation guidelines. They are also actively involved in the ongoing development and enhancement of Fosstodon, contributing both technically and within the community, collaborating closely with the founders to ensure the platform's continued improvement.
31 |
32 | {% for member in site.data.senior-mods %}
33 |
39 | {% endfor %}
40 |
41 |
42 |
43 | ## Moderators
44 |
45 | The moderators are the unsung heroes of Fosstodon. They're the people who work every single report we receive, and take appropriate action to keep Fosstodon a friendly and inclusive place for all our members.
46 |
47 | If you're interested in becoming a moderator, please [contact us](https://hub.fosstodon.org/contact/).
48 |
49 | {% for member in site.data.mods %}
50 |
56 | {% endfor %}
57 |
58 |
59 |
60 |
61 | ## Founders
62 |
63 | Kev and Mike are the founders of Fosstodon. It was their idea to start this whole thing in the first place. They started out simply wanting a vanity handle on the Fediverse, but later decided to open things up to other FOSS and tech enthusiasts. As so, Fosstodon was born.
64 |
65 | In April 2025, both Kev and Mike decided to step down in their roles with Fosstodon and have passed the batton over to Gina.
66 |
67 | {% for member in site.data.founders %}
68 |
74 | {% endfor %}
75 |
76 |
77 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2020/2020-06-01-we-have-a-new-community-manager.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We Have A New Community Manager
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: We have managed to fill the position for our new community manager.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /we-have-a-new-community-manager/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | **Back in April, [we asked](/we-need-a-community-manager) our ever growing community of members whether any of them would like to become our new Community Manager.**
14 |
15 | After a number of applications from the community, Mike and I have finally decided on who our new Community Manager is going to be.
16 |
17 | Before I get to announcing who that actually is, I'd like to tell you a little bit about why we thought we needed a community manager, and what they're going to be responsible for at Fosstodon.
18 |
19 | ## Why do we need a community manager?
20 |
21 | Well, Fosstodon is growing fast. In less than 3 years we have gone from being a "community" of 2 members (myself and Mike), to over 10,000 members today. It's amazing.
22 |
23 | In the early days, managing Fosstodon was easy - there weren't many reports to deal with, and we didn't have much in the way of a community.
24 |
25 | No one was really giving us feedback on how to improve, or coming to us with ideas. No one was donating to the community, so we had no additional funds to [make donations](/about).
26 |
27 | **That's all changed.**
28 |
29 | Now we regularly get feedback from our community and our funding is strong, so we have spare cash that we can use to donate to open source projects.
30 |
31 | The problem is, Mike and I are way too busy with our full time jobs, our personal lives, and all the work that is needed behind the scenes to keep Fosstodon running.
32 |
33 | **That's where our new community manager comes in.**
34 |
35 | ## Responsibilities of our community manager
36 |
37 | Mike and I have spoken to our new community manager to make them aware of what they're getting into and for some reason they're happy to move forward!
38 |
39 | We think that by having a CM in the team, we will be able to offer our members a fuller, more welcoming experience on Fosstodon. Our new CM will be responsible for, but not limited to, the following:
40 |
41 | * **Engaging with the community** - responding to feedback and answering questions.
42 | * **Working on the donations process** so we can make sure we're making donations to open source projects on a regular basis.
43 | * **Growing this community** of ours to ensure it's just as great when we have 50,000 members as it is now.
44 | * **Coming up with new ideas** to engage the community. For example, our recent #100DaysToOffload was a real success.
45 | * **Keeping this blog up to date** with what's going on in Fosstodon.
46 | * **Writing and maintaining documentation**, like our [code of conduct](https://hub.fosstodon.org/code-of-conduct).
47 | * **Generally being awesome.**
48 |
49 | ## Who is the new community manager?
50 |
51 | Ok, ok. I've left you hanging long enough. Drum roll please......
52 |
53 | **Our new community manager is [Cooper](https://fosstodon.org/@cooper).**
54 |
55 | Cooper has been a Fosstodon member for over a year now, and brings with him a lot of experience managing other communities. So we're really happy to have him on the Fosstodon team.
56 |
57 | If you have any ideas for the community, or want to get in touch with Cooper, you can do so via email or via all the usual Mastodon methods.
58 |
59 | **[community@fosstodon.org](mailto:community@fosstodon.org)**
60 |
61 | Finally, I'd like to end this update with a huge thank you to all of our community. without you guys, it would still just be Mike and I on our own, with no friends. :-)
62 |
63 | **Welcome to the team, Cooper!**
64 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/assets/css/style.css:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | /* Import the main SimpleCSS stylesheet */
2 | @import url("https://cdn.simplecss.org/simple.min.css");
3 |
4 | /* Overwrite simple.css colours with Mastodon colours */
5 | :root {
6 | --bg: #282d37;
7 | --accent-bg: #1F232B;
8 | --text: #d9e1e8;
9 | --text-light: #9baec8;
10 | --dark-red: #951818;
11 | --border: #9baec8;
12 | --accent: #858AFA;
13 | --code: #F06292;
14 | --preformatted: #9baec8;
15 | --marked: #79b9e7;
16 | --disabled: #282d37;
17 | }
18 |
19 | /* Override Simple.css Dark theme */
20 | @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
21 | img, video {
22 | opacity: 1;
23 | }
24 | }
25 |
26 | main img {
27 | display: block;
28 | margin-left: auto;
29 | margin-right: auto;
30 | }
31 |
32 | nav a:hover,
33 | nav a.current {
34 | color: var(--accent) !important;
35 | border-color: var(--accent) !important;
36 | background: var(--bg);
37 | filter: none !important;
38 | }
39 |
40 | nav a.current:hover {
41 | text-decoration: none;
42 | }
43 |
44 | p {
45 | margin: 1.5rem 0;
46 | }
47 |
48 | .post-description {
49 | font-size: 1rem;
50 | font-style: italic;
51 | }
52 |
53 | .post-meta {
54 | color: var(--text-light);
55 | font-size: .9rem;
56 | }
57 |
58 | .blog-item {
59 | margin-bottom: 3rem;
60 | }
61 |
62 | .blog-item a {
63 | font-size: 1.4rem;
64 | }
65 |
66 | .button {
67 | border: none !important;
68 | border-radius: 5px;
69 | background: var(--accent);
70 | font-size: 1rem;
71 | color: var(--bg) !important;
72 | text-decoration: none;
73 | padding: 1rem 1.1rem !important;
74 | margin: .5rem 0;
75 | transition: .4s;
76 | }
77 |
78 | .post-title {
79 | line-height: 1.3;
80 | margin-bottom: 0;
81 | }
82 |
83 | /****** Format the notice boxes ******/
84 |
85 | .notice {
86 | background: var(--accent-bg);
87 | padding: 1rem 2rem;
88 | border: 2px solid var(--text);
89 | border-radius: 4px;
90 | margin: 3rem 0;
91 | }
92 |
93 | .notice-red {
94 | background: var(--dark-red);
95 | color: #fff;
96 | padding: 1rem 2rem;
97 | border-radius: 4px;
98 | }
99 |
100 | .notice-red a {
101 | color: #fff !important;
102 | text-decoration: underline;
103 | text-decoration-thickness: .15rem;
104 | }
105 |
106 | .notice-red a:hover {
107 | text-decoration-style: dotted;
108 | }
109 |
110 | /* Format the team banners */
111 | .team-banner {
112 | background: var(--accent-bg);
113 | border: 1px solid var(--border);
114 | border-radius: 4px;
115 | position: relative;
116 | margin: 0.25rem .5rem 0.25rem 0;
117 | padding: 1rem;
118 | width: 48.5%;
119 | height: 400px;
120 | float: left;
121 | }
122 |
123 | /* Make full width on mobile screens */
124 | @media only screen and (max-width: 700px) {
125 | .team-banner {
126 | float: none;
127 | margin: .5rem auto;
128 | width: 90%;
129 | height: auto;
130 | }
131 | .team-banner span {
132 | position: relative;
133 | }
134 | }
135 |
136 | .team-banner p {
137 | margin-bottom: .5em;
138 | font-size: 1rem;
139 | }
140 |
141 | .team-title {
142 | font-size: 1.4em !important;
143 | font-weight: bold;
144 | margin: 0;
145 | }
146 |
147 | .team-avatar {
148 | position: absolute;
149 | top: 0;
150 | right: 0;
151 | width: 90px;
152 | border-radius: 50%;
153 | padding: 1rem;
154 | }
155 |
156 | .sub-heading {
157 | font-size: 1.5rem;
158 | font-style: italic;
159 | color: var(--text-light);
160 | line-height: 1.3;
161 | }
162 |
163 | .center {
164 | text-align: center;
165 | }
166 |
167 | .icon {
168 | vertical-align: sub;
169 | padding-right: .25rem;
170 | display: inline-block;
171 | width: 1.2em;
172 | height: 1em;
173 | stroke-width: 0;
174 | stroke: currentColor;
175 | fill: currentColor;
176 | }
177 |
178 | .verification-links {
179 | display: none;
180 | }
181 |
182 | hr {
183 | max-width: 60%;
184 | display: block;
185 | margin: 2.5rem auto;
186 | }
187 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2018/2018-10-03-new-patrons-keybase-team.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: New Patron's Keybase Team
3 | author: kev
4 | description: If you're a Patron, you now get exclusive access to a private Keybase team.
5 | permalink: /new-patrons-keybase-team/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | In case you didn't know, we use [KeyBase Teams](https://keybase.io/blog/introducing-keybase-teams) here as Fosstodon as our main way to communicate among [the team](/the-team).
10 |
11 | We use KeyBase Teams as a way of discussing things like the direction we want the Fosstodon project to take, any reports that come in, funding, and new projects.
12 |
13 | We're always looking to improve what we offer our members, so today we're happy to announce that we're launching a KeyBase Team that's exclusive to our Patrons on [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon).
14 |
15 | ## What is it for?
16 |
17 | All of our members are extremely important to us, and those of you who have kindly decided to take your support one step further to become a Patreon are quite literally responsible for keeping the lights on here at Fosstodon.
18 |
19 | We felt that a simple _thank you_ and a pat on the back wasn't enough (although Patrons on the $5 tier do get an @fosstodon.org forwarding email) - we wanted to do more for you guys.
20 |
21 | We wanted to provide a forum for our Patrons to be able to have a direct say on how Fosstodon is moved forward. Whether that is early access to new tools/features, direct input in to the various decisions we make every day or discussions about who we want to donate to with extra funding.
22 |
23 | We discussed many options, like Telegram, Signal, MatterMost and Slack. But we decided on KeyBase because we know it's secure, we know it works well as we've been using it for over a year within the project, and it means the team don't have another tool to manage.
24 |
25 | ## How do I get access?
26 |
27 | Firstly, access is exclusive to active Patrons only. Our Patreon tiers start at $1 a month if you're not already a Patron. **Note: This is completely optional. The main Fosstodon instance will ALWAYS be completely free of charge to use.**
28 |
29 | The first thing you need to do is sign up for a KeyBase account (it's free), then send one of the team a message on KeyBase with your Fosstodon username and the email you used to sign up, our KeyBase accounts are:
30 |
31 | * Kev (Europe) - [https://keybase.io/kevq](https://keybase.io/kevq)
32 | * Mike (US West) - [https://keybase.io/mikestone](https://keybase.io/mikestone)
33 | * CodeSections (US East)- [https://keybase.io/codesections](https://keybase.io/codesections)
34 | * Joseph (Asia) - [https://keybase.io/JosephDeFazio](https://keybase.io/JosephDeFazio)
35 |
36 | Note the region of the world where we're all based. For a quick response, please try and message one of the team that is most likely to be online.
37 |
38 | Alternatively you can email [mail@fosstodon.org](mailto:mail@fosstodon.org) and one of us will respond.
39 |
40 | Once we have your message, we will check that the details you have provided match those on your Fosstodon account (we may also message you on Fosstodon for additional verification). Once we know it's really you, and you're an active Patron, you will be added to the KeyBase Team.
41 |
42 | ## What do I do then?
43 |
44 | A "Team" is basically a chat room within KeyBase. So you can install the KeyBase app on your devices, then use the Team chat room to interact with other Patrons on Fosstodon, as well as interact directly with the team.
45 |
46 | We intend to use the Patron's Team as a sounding board for our community. You will get early knowledge and access to new features, tools and information so we can get direct feedback from you guys as to whether we're staying on the right track.
47 |
48 | We're super excited about the new KeyBase Team room for Patrons, but don't worry, if you're not a Patron, the main Fosstodon instance will always be our main priority and method of communication for the entire instance.
49 |
50 | If you want to learn more about becoming a Fosstodon Patron, you can check out [our support page](/support).
51 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2022/2022-11-23-more-upgrades.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: More Upgrades!
3 | author: kev
4 | description: The Twitter storm continues to swell and in response, we've had to upgrade, yet again.
5 | permalink: /more-upgrades-twitter-storm/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 | Jeez Louise, will this Twitter storm ever end? Ten days ago, I wrote about [Twitter fallout - round 2](/fosstodon-vs-twitter-round-2/) where I talked about our response to the influx of Twitter users and how we've had to upgrade our services to cope.
9 |
10 | Well, since then the storm has continued to rage on and we continue to see an influx of users coming from Twitter, and elsewhere.
11 |
12 | ## The new numbers
13 | I won't bore you with all the backstory again. You guys can read that yourself in the post I linked above. But we're closing in fast on 50,000 total users, and nearly 30,000 monthly active users.
14 |
15 | That's around 6x the amount of active users we had before the Twitter storm. As a result, we've had to upgrade the server, *again*. Here's how things look right now:
16 |
17 | * **Database:** 96GB
18 | * **Media storage:** 682GB
19 | * **Processes:** 9
20 | * **Threads:** 300
21 | * **Monthly hosting cost:** $1895.50
22 |
23 | If you're interested, you can read a full breakdown of our funding [on the about page](/about/#current-funding).
24 |
25 | ## The response from the community
26 | Donations and new Patrons continue to roll in, and as a result, we continue to keep our head above water, despite the additional upgrades...just about. We're currently funded for around 3 months.
27 |
28 | Thanks to everyone who continues to help [#FundFosstodon](https://fosstodon.org/tags/FundFosstodon) we really do appreciate it, but this Twitter storm doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. Which means users will continue to flood in, which in turn will likely mean *more* upgrades. **So we still need your help - if you want to help support us, you can find [details here](/support).**
29 |
30 | ## New moderators
31 | We continue to review and approve *every* account that requests access to Fosstodon. This is so we can cut down on spam accounts and the inevitable reports that come off the back of them. Believe it or not, it's *less* work to moderate account approvals, than deal with the tonne a reports from spam accounts.
32 |
33 | All this work has, to be honest, burned out the team (it doesn't help that I had surgery recently too, so have been trying to focus on my recovery). Both Mike and I estimate that we're currently putting **4 hours PER DAY into Fosstodon on moderation and admin...EACH.** And it's similar for our mod team.
34 |
35 | We all have other commitments like day jobs, families etc. it's a real strain for all of us. So to help with the burden, we've added 2 new moderators to the team - [Jan-Lukas Else](https://fosstodon.org/@jle) and [Nikita Karamov](https://fosstodon.org/@kytta).
36 |
37 | Hopefully this will really help with the burden on the team. Thanks gents for agreeing to jump in and support!
38 |
39 | ### Compensation?
40 | Mike and I have been discussing compensation for the Fosstodon team. In the interest of transparency, I think it's important to share this publicly. We would love to be in a position to offer some kind of monetary compensation to our moderators. As you can see above, it's *a lot* of work.
41 |
42 | Fact is, we're just not in a position to offer that to the team at this point. If the financial supports gets healthy enough, we would love to offer this to the team as moderation really is the cornerstone of what makes Fosstodon so great.
43 |
44 | **Again, if you want to help support us, you can find [details here](/support).**
45 |
46 | ## Final thoughts
47 | I think this covers everything I wanted to say. It's somewhat a brain dump of where we are, but we pride ourselves on being super transparent here at Fosstodon HQ, and we want that to continue.
48 |
49 | If you have any questions, comments or concerns about anything I've covered here, please [get in touch](/contact).
50 |
51 | Finally, on behalf of the rest of the team, we want to thank *you*. A community is only as good as its members, so thanks for making Fosstodon the amazing place it is. We hope things here continue to go from strength to strength.
52 |
53 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2021/2021-06-24-were-growing.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: We're Growing, But We Need Your Help!
3 | author: kev
4 | description: Fosstodon is going from strength to strength, but in order to keep that up, we need your help.
5 | permalink: /were-growing-but-we-need-your-help/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | Hey there folks, [Kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev) here. The team and I wanted to give you an update on where we are in terms of our growth and what the future looks like for Fosstodon.
10 |
11 | You're probably aware that we [recently decided to go to an invite only model](https://hub.fosstodon.org/new-member-sign-up/) for the instance. This was for a number of reasons, but mainly to control the spam accounts we were receiving.
12 |
13 | This was a gamble as we weren't sure if this would put any legitimate new members off. We're happy to report that our gamble worked. The change has had a dramatic impact on the spam accounts we're seeing, and therefore the amount of reports we're having to process. We're still seeing steady growth too, so all in all this was win/win we think.
14 |
15 | With more growth comes more cost though. Last year we [moved away from CloudFlare](https://hub.fosstodon.org/moving-away-from-cloudflare/) for our CDN, and we moved to [BunnyCDN](https://bunnycdn.com/?ref=gnn7bkvipc). This was a great move - Bunny provides a fantastic service, and we managed to get out from under the monolith that is CloudFlare.
16 |
17 | We also stood up a Mattermost server for the team to collaborate in, and for us to share ideas, feedback and general chit-chat with our Patrons.
18 |
19 | ## The problem
20 |
21 | Problem is, hosting a large (and growing) instance like Fosstodon, using CDN services like Bunny and having web servers running applications like Mattermost all cost money.
22 |
23 | So we earn approximately **$130/month** from Patreon and Liberpay, but we pay out **$115/month** in hosting charges ([breakdown here](/about/#current-funding)). This leaves a huge $15/month in lieu, and that's assuming we don't have a spike in traffic, or need to increase our hosting resources.
24 |
25 | ## We need your help
26 |
27 | As many of you know, any spare funds we have over our 6 month float get accumulated and donated to open source projects. So we're not trying to line our own pockets here - I just want to make that clear up front.
28 |
29 | If you find Fosstodon useful, and want to see it continue to grow from strength to strength, it would be **AMAZING** if you could throw a donation our way to help keep the lights on.
30 |
31 | **We don't expect anyone to donate and we will NEVER put Fosstodon behind a paywall**, but any help from our amazing community would be greatly appreciated.
32 |
33 | {:.notice}
34 | We currently have 19,000 users on Fosstodon, and 53 Patrons. **That's 0.27%**. If we could get to 1%, we would be set for the long term.
35 |
36 | ## What if we go into the red?
37 |
38 | Well, I don't know to be honest. We would have to discuss it as a team. But we do have a float of cash to keep the lights on, and I'm sure that if funds dried up, we as a team would put our hands in our pockets to keep the lights on for a period of time. Most of the team are already Patrons too.
39 |
40 | ## How can I chip in?
41 |
42 | I'm so glad you asked! There are a few ways to help support us financially - Patron, Liberapay and Paypay are all available.
43 |
44 |
49 |
50 | Our Patron levels start at just $1/month. To reiterate again - there is absolutely no expectation for financial support, but if you can help, we would be ever so grateful.
51 |
52 | **If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to get in touch with one of [the team](/team).**
53 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2025/2025-01-14-our-position-on-threads.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Our Position On Blocking Threads
3 | author: kev
4 | description: We've been discussing this a lot both within the team, and with our Patrons. Here's what Fosstodon will be doing about Threads federation.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | Before we get into this, I wanted to give some context. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg decided to make some [significant changes to how Meta products and services are moderated](https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/), and the general consensus to these changes is that it's all bad.
9 |
10 | This could mean more extremism, more abuse, and general more shittery for the fediverse as Threads now federates. With that in mind, lots of our fellow instance admins have been considering whether they should de-federate with Threads.
11 |
12 | Many have.
13 |
14 | I've written about [my personal opinions on the matter](https://kevquirk.com/blog/threads-and-the-fediverse) before, but this isn't about me, it's about the 60,000 or so people that call Fosstodon home. So the rest of the team and I have been discussing the whole thing. *A lot*.
15 |
16 | We discussed it as a team, and after lots of discussion we were erring toward not de-federating with Threads as people have the option to personally defederate.
17 |
18 | But we wanted a pulse check from the community, so we decided to put a poll on Patreon that asked our patrons to give their opinion as they're a good cross-section of our community. After 299 votes and lots of conversation in the comments, the results were in:
19 |
20 | 
21 |
22 | A lot of the discourse in the comments aligned with the discussion we had as a team in our Mattermost chat.
23 |
24 | **As a result, we have decide NOT to de-federate with Threads.**
25 |
26 | ## Why?
27 |
28 | This decision may piss some of you off. We get it. But when making these decision, we have to consider *all* 60k of the users on our platform. And the fact is, many would like the option of communicating with folk on Threads.
29 |
30 | That said, there is an option to block Threads in its entirety for your account. Had this option not been in place, we may have gone down the de-federation route, but since everyone on Fosstodon can personally block Threads, we felt it prudent to keep the doors open for those that want to step through.
31 |
32 | For those that don't, you can quickly and easily slam that door shut and deadlock the shit out of it.
33 |
34 | ## How to block Threads on your account
35 |
36 | If you're one of the people who still want to block Threads on your account, it's very easy to do.
37 |
38 | Firstly, log into your Fosstodon account on the [web interface](https://fosstodon.org), then go to the search bar at the top left of the page and search for `@zuck@threads.net`. Alternatively, just click [this link](https://fosstodon.org/@zuck@threads.net) to be taken straight to Zuck's Threads profile on Fosstodon.
39 |
40 | Once there, click on the 3 dots next to the `Follow` button, and select the option to **Block domain threads.net**.
41 |
42 | 
43 |
44 | That's it. All of Threads should now be blocked for your account.
45 |
46 | ## Will this change in the future?
47 |
48 | The short answer is *possibly*. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and if we see a lot of abuse coming from Threads to Fosstodon, we will re-think the decision and probably de-federate with them.
49 |
50 | At the moment though, Threads users are generally good fedi citizens. We have around 3,300 people following over 9,000 accounts on Threads and we have only received 2 reports for them. One of which was someone reporting the account just because they were on Threads. The other was because a Walking Dead meme didn't have a content warning.
51 |
52 | 
53 |
54 | ## Final thoughts
55 |
56 | This may not be the decision that some of you want to hear, but like I said earlier, we have to think of the collective, rather than the few. Especially since you can all block Threads in a couple of seconds and be done with it.
57 |
58 | If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with us, either [via email](https://hub.fosstodon.org/contact/), or [on the fedi](https://fosstodon.org/@fosstodon).
59 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2025/2025-05-28-shaving-the-yak.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Shaving the Yak
3 | author: gina
4 | description: Updates from Gina on building the new Fosstodon team and a call for a fellow admin.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | Hi all, Gina here 👋
9 |
10 | Hope you’re all well! Just some quick updates. If you’ve never heard the phrase “shaving the yak”, let me introduce you to a concept that has become very familiar since stepping into the admin role at Fosstodon.
11 |
12 | ## Tasks within tasks
13 |
14 | Yak shaving describes the phenomenon where a seemingly simple task turns into a series of increasingly complicated, often unrelated tasks. Say you want to write a blog post for hub.fosstodon.org on your personal laptop — but first you need to do another thing, such as [fixing your personal laptop](https://fosstodon.org/@Gina/114584297672268080). And to do that, you need to do yet another thing, like checking if your SSD even works anymore. Before you know it, you're in a field somewhere, shaving a yak. Or in my case, deep in my storage unit digging through my spare toolbox to find my miniature Philips screwdriver. All because I wanted to write a post.
15 |
16 | Taking over the admin duties at Fosstodon has involved a fair amount of yak shaving.
17 |
18 | ## Mod training
19 |
20 | First! Mod training is going really well 😊
21 |
22 | When I put out the call for moderators, over 40 Fosstodon users responded, and many more offered their technical expertise! The potential mods were invited to fill out a survey to assess their availability, commitment, mod experience, and alignment with Fosstodon’s values. Shout out to our friends at Limesurvey for helping us out. See the [survey screenshot here.](https://hub.fosstodon.org/assets/images/full-survey.png)
23 |
24 | From those 42 responses, 23 people joined our Mattermost channel to begin training. Some hadn’t filled out the survey, a few opted out to step up as [admins on their own server](https://toot.community/@support/114519606415733028) 🙌, and others were a better fit for different roles. Thanks again to everyone who offered to help.
25 |
26 | Since then, the new mod team has been busy! They’ve:
27 | - Read and discussed the Code of Conduct
28 | - Worked through a new training guide
29 | - Completed 20 example scenarios
30 | - And are discussing anonymized real-world reports this week
31 |
32 | As of next week, their introductions will start to appear on hub.fosstodon.org/team/. They’ll move into a trial period where they’ll have full mod privileges, but continue to check in and discuss reports with the team before taking action. From the start, it's been a focus to make sure our new mod team is diverse — not just in identities, but also in time zones, backgrounds, age, and experience levels. I’m very proud of how this team is coming together.
33 |
34 | ## Admin duties
35 |
36 | Meanwhile, I’ve been busy behind the scenes with classic admin tasks. One big thing: I don’t want Fosstodon’s finances to get mixed with my personal finances. If there’s one thing that strikes fear in the heart of a Dutch person, it’s dealing with the Dutch tax agency (*de Belastingdienst*). In order to responsibly take over finances from Kev, it’ll be necessary to set up a separate legal entity for Fosstodon.
37 |
38 | Initially I looked into [OpenCollective](https://opencollective.com/), but they don’t support recurring expenses; meaning Fosstodon’s monthly expenses would still come from my bank account and I’d be reimbursed later. Not a great option.
39 |
40 | The alternative is setting up a non-profit. Which again opens a yak-shaving subquest:
41 | - Which bank do we go for? Triodos (Dutch only), or Bunq (international but terrible AI support)?
42 | - Since we don’t have an official address and I don’t want my personal address in our legal statutes, should we use a virtual office address? Or can we use the address of a befriended foundation?
43 |
44 | Also, technically I could register the non-profit and open the bank account myself, but ideally we’d have at least one other person involved from the start, for transparency reasons. This means finding a fellow admin. Organizing calls. Doing checks. Sending DMs. Ultimately, more yak shaving. But, it is time.
45 |
46 | ## 📣 Call for a fellow admin 📣
47 |
48 | So hereby a **call for a fellow admin!**
49 |
50 | Have you been active on Fosstodon for a while and do you have a few hours per week for the next year to take on admin duties with me? And would you be okay with being registered as a board member for Fosstodon’s non-profit entity? Then send [me](https://fosstodon.org/@gina) a DM!
51 |
52 | For now, thanks again all for your trust in me :) The yak is practically bald by now, so we’re on the right track. You know where to find me if you have questions or comments!
53 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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2 | remote: https://rubygems.org/
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21 | ffi (1.17.2-x86-linux-gnu)
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55 | i18n (1.14.7)
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100 | rouge (4.5.2)
101 | safe_yaml (1.0.5)
102 | sass-embedded (1.89.2)
103 | google-protobuf (~> 4.31)
104 | rake (>= 13)
105 | sass-embedded (1.89.2-aarch64-linux-android)
106 | google-protobuf (~> 4.31)
107 | sass-embedded (1.89.2-aarch64-linux-gnu)
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109 | sass-embedded (1.89.2-aarch64-linux-musl)
110 | google-protobuf (~> 4.31)
111 | sass-embedded (1.89.2-arm-linux-androideabi)
112 | google-protobuf (~> 4.31)
113 | sass-embedded (1.89.2-arm-linux-gnueabihf)
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133 | terminal-table (3.0.2)
134 | unicode-display_width (>= 1.1.1, < 3)
135 | unicode-display_width (2.6.0)
136 | webrick (1.9.1)
137 |
138 | PLATFORMS
139 | aarch64-linux-android
140 | aarch64-linux-gnu
141 | aarch64-linux-musl
142 | arm-linux-androideabi
143 | arm-linux-gnu
144 | arm-linux-gnueabihf
145 | arm-linux-musl
146 | arm-linux-musleabihf
147 | arm64-darwin
148 | riscv64-linux-android
149 | riscv64-linux-gnu
150 | riscv64-linux-musl
151 | ruby
152 | x86-linux-gnu
153 | x86-linux-musl
154 | x86_64-darwin
155 | x86_64-linux-android
156 | x86_64-linux-gnu
157 | x86_64-linux-musl
158 |
159 | DEPENDENCIES
160 | jekyll
161 | jekyll-sitemap
162 | webrick (~> 1.8)
163 |
164 | BUNDLED WITH
165 | 2.6.9
166 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/_posts/2018/2018-10-05-five-things-to-do-after-you-join-fosstodon.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: Five Things To Do After You Join Fosstodon
3 | author: kev
4 | description: Useful tips to get you started with Fosstodon and our amazing community.
5 | permalink: /five-things-to-do-after-you-join-fosstodon/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 | 
9 |
10 | So you have decided to join Fosstodon, but what now? Your timelines are looking a little bare...hang on, rewind..._what is a timeline? What is Mastodon? What is Fosstodon? Are they different?_
11 |
12 | These are questions we commonly receive from new users, so we decided to put together a list of five things you should do after you join Fosstodon, which should make things a little more clear.
13 |
14 | ## 1\. Get to know Mastodon
15 |
16 | Mastodon, Fosstodon, the Fediverse - what are all these things? We get it, the concept of Mastodon can be a little confusing at first. Lucky for you though, there are some great article out there that can help.
17 |
18 | Two members of the Fosstodon team, [CodeSections](https://fosstodon.org/@codesections) and [Kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev) have put together some really useful articles on getting to know Mastodon and how the whole thing works:
19 |
20 | * [Mastodon Is Better than Twitter: Elevator Pitch](https://www.codesections.com/blog/mastodon-elevator-pitch/) (by CodeSections)
21 | * [Getting Started with Mastodon](https://kevq.uk/getting-started-with-mastodon/) (by Kev)
22 | * [How Does Mastodon Work?](https://kevq.uk/how-does-mastodon-work/) (also by Kev)
23 |
24 | By now you should have a good idea of what Mastodon is and how the Fosstodon instance fits in to that equation. So let's get stuck in to Fosstodon and what you can do there.
25 |
26 | ## 2\. Fill in your profile
27 |
28 | Filling in your profile only takes a couple of minutes, but it contains some crucial information about you and your interests.
29 |
30 | If you join Fosstodon and keep a blank profile you're a lot less likely to have people follow you back, or engage with you, if you have a default avatar and no info in your profile.
31 |
32 | Having an engaging profile will help you build an audience on Fosstodon, and across the fediverse, so you are more likely to get engagement. Also, you can put links in your profile, so if you have a blog of your own, you may get some new visitors!
33 |
34 | 
35 |
36 | ## 3\. Post an introduction
37 |
38 | We recommend that one of your early toots should be an introduction about yourself, the things you're interested in, and why you have decided to join Fosstodon.
39 |
40 | Make sure you include the #introductions hashtag in your post, so people can see your post is an introduction and so that it appears when people search for the #introductions hashtag.
41 |
42 | People with larger amounts of followers then tend to boost your introduction so it gets more visibility. Ipso facto, you get more followers too. :)
43 |
44 |
45 |
46 | ## 4\. Find interesting people to follow
47 |
48 | When you first join Fosstodon, it can be difficult to find interesting people to follow. There are millions of people throughout the fediverse, so how do you even start finding the right people?
49 |
50 | A good place to start is the local timeline. We're very proud of the fact that Fosstodon is full of really interesting individuals who have a Linux/FOSS/technical background. So seeing what people are tooting on Fosstodon is a great starting point.
51 |
52 | You can also take a look at the #ff hashtag, which is short for _Follow Friday_. Every Friday people from all over the fediverse recommend a number of interesting people that they follow. There are some great recommendations in the #ff hashtag.
53 |
54 | You can also check out the [Mastodon Trunk](https://communitywiki.org/trunk), which is a collaborative website that allows people from the fediverse to be added to user lists for all kinds of topics. This is a great way of discovering new people.
55 |
56 | Since you have decided to join Fosstodon, we're willing to bet that you're probably interested in Linux, FOSS and technology in general. So here are some user lists from the Trunk that you may find interesting:
57 |
58 | * [FLOSS](https://communitywiki.org/trunk/grab/FLOSS)
59 | * [Free Software](https://communitywiki.org/trunk/grab/Free%20Software)
60 | * [Information Technology](https://communitywiki.org/trunk/grab/Information%20Technology)
61 | * [Linux](https://communitywiki.org/trunk/grab/Linux)
62 | * [Operating Systems](https://communitywiki.org/trunk/grab/Operating%20Systems)
63 | * [Technology](https://communitywiki.org/trunk/grab/Technology)
64 |
65 | ## 5\. Enjoy Fosstodon
66 |
67 | The fifth item in this list is probably the most important - _**enjoy Fosstodon!**_ We're super proud of the community we have built up around Fosstodon, we rarely have any problems with trolls, and the vast majority of people are inclusive, interesting and polite.
68 |
69 | We really do hope you enjoy your time on Fosstodon, but if you have any further questions, or need help, feel free to ping one of [the team](/the-team).
70 |
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/_posts/2025/2025-05-07-fosstodon-community-statement.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Fosstodon Community Statement
3 | author: gina
4 | description: Official statement on cleaning house, owning past mistakes, reaffirming support for marginalized folks and fair treatment for everyone.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 | Hi all, Gina here 👋
8 |
9 | I would like to start this post by emphasizing the following: *two things can be true at the same time.*
10 |
11 | Key points in this post:
12 |
13 | * I reject our former moderator’s views and I believe our former admins could have responded more thoughtfully. I’d like to affirm Fosstodon’s commitment to being a welcoming and inclusive place for tech and FOSS enthusiasts from any background. This 100% includes people from marginalized communities.
14 |
15 | * I also need to state that our former admins were treated poorly and that this isn’t okay. Our moderators are bound by our Code of Conduct (CoC). This means that they are responsible for upholding it, but protected by it as well.
16 |
17 | * We’re committed to doing better. This includes practical measures, but also occasional conversations about the tension between freedom of speech and moderation. We promise to do our best, please keep holding us accountable.
18 |
19 | ## What happened
20 | Recently, it was reported to us that a now former Fosstodon moderator, on a separate platform, took part in harmful engagement towards marginalized communities. We do not support or condone behavior, on any platform, that targets, dehumanizes, or disrespects marginalized communities. Regardless of whether a diverse and experienced moderator team balances out the views of one individual mod, participation in such behavior \- whether on or off Fosstodon \- undermines the inclusive space we are trying to build.
21 |
22 | Fosstodon strives to be a welcoming and inclusive space for tech and FOSS enthusiasts from all backgrounds. This absolutely includes people from marginalized communities. I acknowledge that the initial response from our former admins could have been more thoughtful and better communicated. I understand that this left many feeling unsupported and hurt. Genuinely, I’m very sorry about that. It shouldn’t have happened.
23 |
24 | ## Protecting people
25 | I want to be clear: our server stands in **solidarity with marginalized communities**. Fosstodon's Code of Conduct is meant to protect every member from harassment and abuse. No one should ever feel unwelcome here because of their identity or background. I deeply regret that the situation with our former moderator caused pain and that this wasn’t handled adequately. The new team will be committed to preventing this from happening again.
26 |
27 | Now.. remember when I said *two things can be true at the same time?*
28 |
29 | It’s important to acknowledge that, in the wake of these events, our former admins were also treated poorly. Kev and Mike experienced harassment and unfair personal attacks, and that was and is not acceptable. No one \- regardless of their role \- should be subjected to hostility. From now on, the protections outlined in our Code of Conduct will apply to the new team as well. Disagreements can be handled without name calling and abuse. Yes, the admins and mods should be held to a higher standard, but we all deserve to feel safe and respected.
30 |
31 | ## Doing better
32 | The past few days I’ve been scrolling non-stop through the fediverse, listening to your opinions, reading countless threads, posting about what’s happening, responding to people’s scepticism, learning from our former admins and current mods, chatting with admins from other Mastodon servers, and hopefully keeping most of you informed. I’m committed to learning from the past and doing better.
33 |
34 | Some of the steps being taken:
35 |
36 | * A new admin and moderator team will be formed, with clear guidelines.
37 | * Our new team will be asked to adhere and live up to our CoC both on Fosstodon and externally.
38 | * All moderators and admins will receive training on fair and inclusive moderation according to the CoC.
39 | * We will try to improve transparency around how we handle reports.
40 | * We will try to improve our feedback process. In addition to our existing report channels, we’ll experiment with Fider, an opensource user feedback platform. This way your feedback doesn’t get lost in threads of toots.
41 | * There will always be tension between freedom of speech and moderation. This will be an ongoing conversation with Fosstodon users and the new team.
42 |
43 | Please know that the new team is open to your feedback and reports at any time. There will be a future blogpost about reporting, moderating and checks and balances. If you see behavior that concerns you, or if you have ideas on how we can improve Fosstodon, we want to hear from you. Your voice matters.
44 |
45 | ## Next steps
46 | Sorry that this message took a while. I needed time to structure my thoughts and to make sure that we have plans, not just words. I’d like to thank everyone who stayed, trusted my efforts, and offered words of support. I’m looking forward to working with the new team, which is in the process of being formed. As I said in my previous post, I’m committed to keeping the original intent of the server alive; to be a welcoming, safe and inclusive place for tech and FOSS enthusiasts. Please keep holding me and the team accountable.
47 |
48 | Thank you for listening <3
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/_posts/2022/2022-08-05-five-years-of-fosstodon.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Five Years of Fosstodon
3 | author: kev
4 | description: Fosstodon has recently celebrated its 5th birthday. So here's a celebratory sticker and the story of how we got started
5 | permalink: /five-years-of-fosstodon/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 | On 01 August 2017 at 21:59 UTC, Fosstodon went live with its very first user, yours truly...[@kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev). This followed my frustration with the many changes to Google+, Google's attempt at a social network, which was my primary social network at the time.
9 |
10 | It seemed to me that things were going downhill with every interation of Google+ and the writing was on the wall. It simply wasn't as good as it used to be. So I wrote a post asking my followers on G+ if they knew of any alternatives I could test.
11 |
12 | I soon got a reply from someone who had become a friend over the 6 or so years that I had been on Google+, [Mike Stone](https://fosstodon.org/@mike). He said he'd been playing around with this little known Twitter clone, Mastodon.
13 |
14 | So I signed up for an account on one of the generalist tech instances and had a play around. I've never really been one for Twitter, but Mastodon felt like a nice place to be. I spent a few months mincing around that instance, but I wanted an instance that was more FOSS/Linux focussed.
15 |
16 | Problem was, I couldn't find one...
17 |
18 | ## The birth of Fosstodon
19 | Mike and I had met on Google+ as we both ran in the booming Linux/open source circles there. I had a feeling Mike would be looking for a similar community, like myself, on Mastodon. So I pinged Mike a message that went something like this:
20 |
21 | > Hey Mike,
22 | > What do you think about starting our own Mastodon instance that's Linux/FOSS focussed? Doubt it'll go anywhere, but at least we will have cool vanity handles. 😊
23 |
24 | Mike thought it was a good idea, but we both wanted to enjoy the network, not spend all our time administering servers. I found [Masto.Host](https://masto.host) and very early on we decided to host with them in order to remove those headaches.
25 |
26 | **Side note:** I'm so glad we made this decision. Having Hugo from Masto.Host manage the hosting side for us is a large part of the reason why Fosstodon has been so successful, I think. Mike and I have been ever-present admins on the network, not squirrelled away messing with servers.
27 |
28 | Anyway, back to the story...I came up with the name Fosstodon, registered the domain, signed up with Masto.Host on their smallest package at the time, which was $5/month, and away we went.
29 |
30 | ## Fosstodon's growth
31 | I distinctly remember a conversation with Mike where we were both like *wouldn't it be cool if we got to 100 members!* Yeah, we did that in a few weeks. Then it was hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands.
32 |
33 | The growth is far beyond anything we could have hoped for. But the best part is that we think we have managed to keep the small community feel on Fosstodon.
34 |
35 | ## Some thanks
36 | Mike and I literally couldn't keep Fosstodon running without the help of some very key people. So I'd like to take a second to thank them. Seriously, folks. Fosstodon wouldn't be possible without these people.
37 |
38 | * **[Hugo](https://masto.pt/@hugo)** - the long suffering owner of Masto.Host. The stability of service we all enjoy is thanks to him!
39 | * **[Ru](https://fosstodon.org/@ru) and [Tay0](https://fosstodon.org/@tay0)** - our amazing moderators who kept things in check and process all those reports we get.
40 | * **[Cooper](https://fosstodon.org/@cooper)** - our fearless community manager who helps support Mike and I in many, *many* ways.
41 | * **All our contributors** - [Fosstodon isn't cheap to run these days](/about) and thanks to all you contributors on Patreon etc. we're able to keep the lights on here at Fosstodon HQ.
42 | * **YOU!** Where would we be without our thousands of members? It doesn't get more literal than this...without members, we have no community.
43 |
44 | I'd also like to thank the handful of people who have been volunteer moderators in the past. You guys rock, thank you all!
45 |
46 | ## STICKERS!
47 | To celebrate *Five Years of Fosstodon* we decided to make some stickers, which are available on our store right now. They won't be around forever, so make sure you nab them while you can! Here's what they look like:
48 |
49 | 
50 |
51 |
52 |
53 | Thanks again to you all. You're all amazing and all play a part in making what Fosstodon is today - a friendly and bustling community of people from all walks of life, with all kinds of backgrounds.
54 |
55 | **Here's to the next *Five Years of Fosstodon!***
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/_posts/2025/2025-04-30-update-from-gina.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | ---
2 | title: An Intro/Update From Gina
3 | author: gina
4 | description: A quick intro from Fosstodon's new admin, Gina, and some of her short-term plans.
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 | Hi all, Gina here!
8 |
9 | Whoo, it’s been a week on [#Fosstodon](https://fosstodon.org/tags/Fosstodon), hasn’t it! As many of you know by now, Kev and Mike have decided to step down as admins. This is after many years of dedication, building this amazing community into what it is today; the biggest server on the fediverse for FOSS and technology enthusiasts. Thank you again, Kev and Mike, for your hard work. I hope you stay on Fosstodon as regular users and enjoy posting about your favorite topics again.
10 |
11 | In the meantime the community has responded; we don’t want Fosstodon to disappear! I’ll be taking over some admin tasks from Kev and Mike and will focus on building our team in the coming weeks. Fosstodon stays. I’ll need your help, so please keep reading.
12 |
13 | ## About Gina
14 | I’m [Gina](https://fosstodon.org/@Gina), a 35 year old tech enthusiast living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I live with [Pookie and Wessie](https://fosstodon.org/@Gina/114006977685704107), two spoiled tuxedo cats. In my free time I enjoy bouldering and climbing, cooking for friends, and ignoring my pile of half-finished DIY projects. My politics lean left, I’ve been a member of the Dutch labour party for most of my life. My personal philosophy is that we all do our best, and that’s all we can do.
15 |
16 | A long, long time ago, I studied Political Sciences. But because Political Scientist isn’t an actual job, I immediately transferred to IT. I worked as a programmer and in 2018 I became the IT manager at Mama Cash, an international feminist non-profit. Mama Cash wanted nothing to do with GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), so it was up to me to build a fully FOSS internal IT environment. Everything from servers and virtualisation, to apps and desktops was replaced with Linux, Proxmox, Ipsilon, Zimbra, Nextcloud, LibreOffice/Collabora, Jitsi, Rocketchat, Linux Mint desktops and a bunch of other opensource tech. It was nerve wracking, but so cool. And it worked! It was during this time that I found Fosstodon, where I could share my FOSS adventures. Fosstodon was a breath of fresh air compared to Twitter. I really enjoyed learning about all these cool FOSS projects, and to get to know the people behind them - sometimes even irl at Fosdem. I occasionally did some mod work as well. After I left Mama Cash I stayed on Fosstodon, which has been my fediverse home for the last 6 years.
17 |
18 | ## Vision on Fosstodon
19 | My vision is very simple. I’d like everything to stay the same, while learning from the past. I think Fosstodon could benefit from more attentive moderation and ways for the community to give feedback. Moderators will be asked to live up to and adhere to the [Code of Conduct (CoC)](https://hub.fosstodon.org/coc/), both on Fosstodon and other online platforms. We’ll look into ways to be more transparent about moderating. I’d also like to implement [Fider](https://fider.io/), an opensource upvote system, to collect ideas for improvement. This way your feedback will be more visible and the admin team won’t have to read through 500 threads of toots to hear your opinion.
20 |
21 | Other than this, things will stay the same. We’ll remain an invite-only server for now. I’d love to open up the server again, but this can only be possible with a strong enough mod team. The CoC will remain the same. CW policies will remain the same. Official communication will be placed on [hub.fosstodon.org](https://hub.fosstodon.org) and posted through [@fosstodon](https://fosstodon.org/@fosstodon), same as it is now. We’ll keep being free and donation based. Most of all, I’m committed to keeping the original intent of the server alive; to be a welcoming, safe and inclusive place for tech and FOSS enthusiasts.
22 |
23 | ## How you can help?
24 | Kev and Mike have recently shown me the admin workload. I’m not going to lie; It's A LOT. It's seriously impressive how much they were doing in order to keep Fosstodon running, and to keep it nice and safe. Kev and Mike have agreed to stay on a bit longer to help train our new team.
25 |
26 | As it looks now, we will need:
27 |
28 | * a team of mods of 6 to 8 people. Moderation is done in the back-end of our Mastodon server, through a relatively usable UI. As a mod, you’ll have to agree to familiarize yourself with, live up to and adhere to our Code of Conduct; on Fosstodon and other public platforms. Workload can be divided as we see fit, handling a report is usually about a 10 minute job.
29 | * 1 to 2 technical admins for sysadmin tasks. This is mostly upkeep of our Mattermost server and implementation of our new upvote system, plus small technical tasks. Fosstodon itself is hosted at masto.host.
30 | * a Kev to my Mike and vice versa. One person who would be interested in sharing the overall coordination. This would mean occasional chats through Signal about admin coordination and shared communication on hub.fosstodon.org.
31 |
32 | We’ve already received quite a few volunteering offers from our amazing community, more are always welcome! Please reply to @fosstodon’s post or send me ([Gina](https://fosstodon.org/@Gina)) a message if you’re interested in any of the roles above. After the weekend I'll gather everyone who has offered to volunteer onto Mattermost, and we'll build a team.
33 |
34 | ## Final note
35 | I can’t make any promises, except that I will do my best. Thank you for your trust in me. <3
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/_data/mods.yml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | - name: Nujtag
2 | role: Moderator
3 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/nujtag.webp
4 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@Nujtag
5 | description: |
6 | I’m here to contribute, assist, & learn more about the FOSS Multiverse and community.
7 | Industry Certification
8 | CompTIA Security+
9 | Community Support
10 | eff - Guardian Member
11 | DEFCON33 - Attendee
12 | Michael Bazzell - OSIP Training
13 | IEEE - Student Member
14 | I only approve followers who have engaged with me.
15 | PS. My toots autodelete.
16 |
17 | - name: Jannem
18 | role: Moderator
19 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/jannem.webp
20 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@jannem
21 | description: |
22 | Programmer and computational neuroscientist, now HPC support engineer in Okinawa, Japan.
23 | Photography, bouldering, recreational programming and playing the sanshin are things I do.
24 | Sweden, Osaka and Okinawa are places I particularly care about.
25 |
26 | - name: Chrisafk
27 | role: Moderator
28 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/chrisafk.webp
29 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@Chrisafk
30 | description: |
31 | 👨💻 Embedded Software Engineer | FOSS Devotee 🐧
32 | KDE Plasma & openSUSE | 🔒 Fierce Privacy Defender
33 | 📍 Southeast Michigan | Hunting for low-level/back-end software positions
34 | 🌍 Traveling, hiking, & inline skating Detroit’s vibrant streets | Thriving in nature
35 | 🎓 BS in Computer Science | Championing open-source, community, & inclusive tech vibes
36 |
37 | - name: Jimsalter
38 | role: Moderator
39 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/jimsalter.webp
40 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@jimsalter
41 | description: |
42 | Hi! I'm Jim Salter, aka mercenary_sysadmin, aka the biggest ZFS stan on the planet.
43 | I am *not* Jim Salter, the Associated Press reporter based in Missouri. That's a different guy, and he hides from the Internet.
44 |
45 | - name: Fivespeed
46 | role: Moderator
47 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/fivespeed.webp
48 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@fivespeed
49 | description: Husband, father, and lover of fine coffee. Whether it’s under the hood, or in a terminal window, I enjoy tinkering with things.
50 |
51 | - name: Julianfairfax
52 | role: Moderator
53 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/julianfairfax.webp
54 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@julianfairfax
55 | description: |
56 | Developer, supporter of the free and open source software movement, defender of human rights, of democracy, and of European unity.
57 | Développeur, défenseur du mouvement des logiciels libres, défenseur des droits de l'homme, de la démocratie, et de l'unité européenne.
58 | Entwickler, Unterstützer der Bewegung für freie und quelloffene Software, Verteidiger der Menschenrechte, der Demokratie, und der europäischen Einigung.
59 |
60 | - name: Artfulsodger
61 | role: Moderator
62 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/artfulsodger.webp
63 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@artfulsodger
64 | description: |
65 | A FOSS and selfhosting enthusiast! Software Engineer in the Launchpad team at Canonical. Python Emacs Linux Debian Ubuntu Arch privacy India gaming
66 | Post and opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.
67 |
68 | - name: Thewk
69 | role: Moderator
70 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/thewk.webp
71 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@thewk
72 | description: |
73 | I was a software engineer for the last 13 years, now in sales. Apart from that, skiing instructor and climbing enthusiat, hobby photographer, cook and bad guitar player....
74 | Also proudly donating to multiple foss projects
75 |
76 | - name: Emily Flion
77 | role: Moderator
78 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/emneo.webp
79 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@emneo
80 | description: |
81 | Free software enthusiast currently working at Epitech Toulouse.
82 | I like to program in C/Haskell/Python/Zig.
83 | I hate C++.
84 | Posts get deleted after 2 weeks for privacy related reasons :3
85 |
86 | - name: Fedops
87 | role: Moderator
88 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/fedops.webp
89 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@fedops
90 | description: |
91 | childfree, foss zfs, privacy, selfhosting, hiking, gardening, nature conservancy, EV physicalmedia. Unix and Linux sysadmin turned industrial OT security architect. Forest smallholder.
92 | Please fill in your bio before following.
93 | When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new. - The Dalai Lama
94 | Avatar= ASR coat of arms by Joe Creighton.
95 |
96 | - name: Nyx
97 | role: Moderator
98 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/nyx.webp
99 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@nyx
100 | description: FOSS Lover | GameDev | Privacy is a right | She / Her
101 |
102 | - name: Calharding
103 | role: Moderator
104 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/calharding.webp
105 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@calharding
106 | description: |
107 | I was the shadow of the penguin slain
108 | By Exchange, Azure, and the Win domain.
109 |
110 | - name: Tsvenson
111 | role: Moderator
112 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/tsvenson.webp
113 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@tsvenson
114 | description: |
115 | Building a cooperating system • Born at CO₂ 325 PPM • Proud nerd • On the ADHD and #Autism spectrum 🤘 • 🇸🇪 Kanspiratör 🇬🇧 Canspirator 🇪🇸 [buscando] • YNWA since 1974
116 | For everything not FOSS, Find me as tsvenson on mastodon.online
117 |
118 | - name: Emanuel
119 | role: Moderator
120 | avatar: /assets/images/avatars/emanuel.webp
121 | link: https://fosstodon.org/@emanuel
122 | description: Pediatric nurse. In between, runner🏃 cyclist🚴 gamer🎮 and coffee lover☕
123 |
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/_posts/2018/2018-08-23-why-fosstodon-is-english-only.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Why Fosstodon Is English Only
3 | author: kev
4 | description: An explaination as to why Fosstodon is an English only instance.
5 | permalink: /why-fosstodon-is-english-only/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 | {: .notice}
9 | This rule was revoked as of August 24th, 2023 by a vote from our community.
10 |
11 | We recently posted a reminder on our [official Fosstodon account](https://fosstodon.org/@fosstodon) that Toots on Fosstodon should be in English. We knew that this post would frustrate many of you, and we sincerely apologise. We thought long and hard about our decision, and it was the best we could come up with to protect our members from harassment and keep the Fosstodon team from being overwhelmed.
12 |
13 | We decided to write this blog post in order give you the rationale behind our decision. For context, here is the post from Fosstodon:
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 | ## The Problem
18 |
19 | So why did this come up in the first place? Well, we were noticing that the instance was getting more and more popular, and the growth seemed to be happening at an exponential rate.
20 |
21 | With this growth came more posts using non-English languages. Unfortunately — despite being spread over three continents — the team at Fosstodon are all native English speakers. This meant we had to use online translation tools to read toots not in English to make sure they abide by our [Code of Conduct](/coc).
22 |
23 | Now you may be thinking _"why do you even need to do that? If there's a problem, people will report the post."_ That may be true in concept, but the reality is that very few people actually report posts — most people simply opt to block something they don't want to see instead. Even if people were willing to step up and report inappropriate toots, we might not even have any members that speak a particular language, so there would potentially be no one who could submit a report in the first place.
24 |
25 | As a result, if we do not translate non-English toots, there's a risk that hateful or otherwise egregiously inappropriate Toots could be posted on Fosstodon without us even knowing. If someone then comes across that post on the Federated Timeline, there could be a perception that Fosstodon is full of trolls etc. We do not want that reputation as it simply isn't true.
26 |
27 | Yes, this is an edge-case scenario that may never happen, but it's in our nature to think about edge-cases! Plus, as Fosstodon grows, it gets more difficult to keep on top of this kind of thing, so it gets more likely to happen. We needed to come up with a way of getting around this problem…
28 |
29 | ## The Solution
30 |
31 | The Fosstodon team is constantly discussing important subjects including strategies for growing Fosstodon, reports made by the community, and problems like this.
32 |
33 | After a lot of discussion, we narrowed the potential solutions down to a few options:
34 |
35 | 1. We allow other languages and simply shoulder the burden of translating toots.
36 | 2. We look to expand the team and add moderators who speak a variety of languages.
37 | 3. We only allow Toots in English.
38 |
39 | ### Option 1 - Translate Toots
40 |
41 | This simply wasn't feasible. At the time, we had approximately 600 users and this was already becoming a big job. We had to copy the Toot, paste it in to an online translator, try and decipher what was actually being said from a potentially poor translation, decide if the Toot is ok, and finally take action if warranted.
42 |
43 | This process only takes around 5 minutes per Toot, but we were already seeing 10–15 non-English Toots every day. That's over an hour every day translating and checking toots. We now have a little over 1000 members, so we would need to dedicate over 90 minutes a day doing this.
44 |
45 | The team are all volunteers. We created Fosstodon because we wanted a place for people who are interested in FOSS to communicate and collaborate. If we're spending over an hour a day translating Toots, that's an hour that we can't spend interacting with our other members, or working on reports that have come in, or working on strategies for growing Fosstodon.
46 |
47 | We all have full-time jobs too, and families, and friends, and other projects we work on. So manually translating Toots was not a sustainable solution.
48 |
49 | ### Option 2 - Hire More Mods
50 |
51 | This was our first plan. The majority of the toots we were seeing were German and Spanish, and we knew we had native speakers who would be willing to help moderate those toots. _**GREAT!**_ We thought.
52 |
53 | Then it dawned on us — the instance is growing, and fast. What happens when we start seeing Japanese posts? Or Italian? Or French? Or Russian? Or any other language you can think of?
54 |
55 | Well, we'd either need to find a native speaker who can help moderate, which becomes less and less likely as more languages are introduced, or we're back to square one; translating Toots and taking action as needed.
56 |
57 | Neither option is viable long-term.
58 |
59 | ### Option 3 - Go English Only
60 |
61 | This was the only solution we were left with. It's not perfect, and yes we pissed off a number of our members. But we knew that most, if not all, of our members spoke English. If they didn't, they wouldn't have been able to understand 90% of what was posted on Fosstodon; and if that was the case, why would they have joined in the first place?
62 |
63 | So with that, we decided to make the difficult decision to go English only on Fosstodon.
64 |
65 | ## Exceptions
66 |
67 | There are exceptions to this rule. All we really ask is the initial Toot is posted be in English. By default, people don't see replies in their local timelines. If you end up speaking German in DM, or in replies, so what? As long as that conversation doesn't breach our CoC we're all good.
68 |
69 | If a conversation does take a turn for the worse, hopefully it will be reported by one of the parties involved, or by someone who has seen the reply thread. We can then take action on an ad-hoc basis, rather than spending vast amounts of time every single night going through these posts.
70 |
71 | ## Final Thoughts
72 |
73 | Hopefully this rather long post will help to explain the rationale behind making our decision to go English only. We know it's not perfect, but life rarely is. We hope you guys understand why we have done this, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comments below, or [contact one of the team](/team) on Fosstodon.
74 |
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/coc.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: CoC | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: Guidelines on how we expect our members to behave.
4 | permalink: /coc/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | ## Code of Conduct
8 | v0.1.0-2025-06-19
9 |
10 | In this document, we describe our intentions for Fosstodon, and set our expectations for all users on Fosstodon.
11 |
12 | This is a living document, which may be amended at any time by the [Fosstodon team](https://hub.fosstodon.org/team) to better communicate or adjust these goals.
13 |
14 | ### What we are
15 |
16 | Fosstodon is a Mastodon instance that federates with many other servers in the fediverse, also known as the open social web. The theme of this instance is Free/Libre/Open-Source software and adjacent communities. This is what the "FOSS" in our name represents.
17 |
18 | ### Intentions
19 |
20 | Fosstodon intends to provide a friendly environment for those who want a social media experience that prioritizes FOSS, where you can share your interests, passions, and achievements. Nobody should feel unwelcome on the basis of their skills, experience, or ability to read a manual; Fosstodon is *not* an experts-only space.
21 |
22 | While using Fosstodon or engaging with Fosstodon members, everyone should be safe from harassment and similar antisocial behavior. As a community, we aim to curate a safe place for anyone, regardless of their characteristics including but not limited to: race, ethnicity, national identity, spoken language, sex, gender identity or expression, sexuality, sexual orientation, physical or mental health status, disability, other body characteristics, or age.
23 |
24 | Additionally, as members, you should tolerate the values of others, *provided* those values do not conflict with this code of conduct or impact the safety of others. We do not want a [paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) on Fosstodon.
25 |
26 | We understand that many members have strong opinions about "freedom of speech", however this is not a feature we offer.
27 |
28 | ### Expectations
29 |
30 | #### Conduct
31 |
32 | This section defines our expectations for all content on Fosstodon, *regardless* of whether it is public, unlisted, followers-only, or addressed to specific people.
33 |
34 | The following are things we encourage while using Fosstodon:
35 | - *DO* toot your own horn and show us your authentic self. We want to know about cool things you are involved with and things you have achieved.
36 | - *DO* make use of blocking, muting, and labeling tools to tune out content you don't want to see. Social media can be triggering, stressful, and anxiety-inducing.
37 | - *DO* use hashtags and content warnings (CWs) to allow everyone else the opportunity to customize their feeds, too.
38 | - *DO* use an alt text when uploading pictures or videos, to support users with visual impairment.
39 | - *DO* respect the lived experiences, boundaries, and agency of others. This includes avoiding the tone-policing of protests or giving unsolicited advice.
40 | - *DO* make a reasonable effort to respect how people identify themselves. It is good to check profiles before making assumptions!
41 | - *DO* demonstrate empathy and kindness to others.
42 | - *DO* accept accountability and responsibility, apologize to those affected by your mistakes, and learn from the experience.
43 | - *DO* prioritize the health and cohesiveness of the community. Remember we're all involved in FOSS; be collaborative here as well.
44 |
45 | The following iterates the content that we absolutely do *not* want on Fosstodon:
46 | - *DO NOT* disparage individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, national identity, spoken language, sex, gender identity or expression, sexuality, sexual orientation, physical or mental health status, disability, other body characteristics, age, culture, religion, personal philosophy, or political affiliation.
47 | - *DO NOT* use slurs, "dog-whistles", coded pejoratives, or otherwise publish content that is bigoted, supremacist, or hateful.
48 | - *DO NOT* harass, "dog-pile", defame, intimidate, threaten, expose private information about ("doxing"), or intentionally cause distress to other users.
49 | - *DO NOT* knowingly post misleading information or engage in deceptive or disruptive campaigns intended to incite alarm.
50 | - *DO NOT* participate in engagement that is intended to antagonize, inflame, or cause confrontation.
51 | - *DO NOT* post adult or age-restricted content. This includes nudity and other sexualized or violent content.
52 | - *DO NOT* post commercial promotions, or advertise through posts that are exclusively links and/or which contain excessive hashtags. This includes repetitive self-promotion for profit. We don't want spam.
53 | - *DO NOT* use automated tools to post without also monitoring and/or interacting from your account.
54 |
55 | Neither retribution, nor any sincerely-held belief or opinion, will be accepted as an excuse for any of the above.
56 |
57 | In cases of behavior that conflicts with this document, we expect you to contact the moderation team via the report tool, rather than attempt to enforce it yourself.
58 |
59 | #### Our local timeline
60 |
61 | The local timeline consists of public listed posts and replies that our members make. To help fulfill our intention of prioritizing FOSS discussion, members should make use of labeling tools that Mastodon provides for improved reach and individual curation. Hashtags and content warnings (CWs) help people customize their timelines. By using these tools, you make it possible for others to shape their experiences by allowing them to filter or hide content they don't want.
62 |
63 | CWs are not a requirement for most content, however special care must be given for *labeling* topics that others may find overwhelming. This includes, but is not limited to:
64 | - global and local politics,
65 | - things likely to upset others such as graphic media, rants, etc.,
66 | - activism that does not contribute to improving FOSS or its communities, and
67 | - low-effort "[shitposting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitposting)".
68 |
69 | Using your best judgment with CWs is encouraged; however the moderation team may apply CWs to reported content they deem to fall into any of the above categories.
70 |
71 | #### AI disclosures and consent
72 |
73 | Fosstodon allows the use of AI-generated content. Stand-alone creative works (such as images, videos, or literary works) that have been made with the use of Generative AI should be accompanied by a disclosure to that effect. Our intention is to encourage an environment where this content is unambiguous.
74 |
75 | Training models on content published on Fosstodon must involve the consent of the parties who publish that content.
76 |
77 | ## Enforcement of this Code of Conduct
78 |
79 | Moderation of Fosstodon is done collaboratively by a team that includes global representation from people of color, as well as LGBTQIA+ and disabled folk. All decision-making communication, including the audit log, are visible to everyone in the Fosstodon team. All team members are committed to the [team covenant](https://hub.fosstodon.org/covenant), and will take a pragmatic and individual approach to each report.
80 |
81 | In egregious circumstances, including but not limited to hate speech, extremist affiliation, or other behavior that is a danger to others, activity outside of Fosstodon may result in the suspension of member accounts. This is not a decision that will be made lightly, solely by any individual moderator, or without notable investigation.
82 |
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/_posts/2022/2022-04-29-twitter-migrant-post-mortem.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Twitter, Elon & Fosstodon - A Post-Mortem
3 | author: kev
4 | description: We were effectively DDoS'd by Twitter migrants following Elon's purchase of Twitter. Here's what we were doing in the background.
5 | permalink: /elon-twitter-post-mortem/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 | If you haven't heard, Elon Musk [recently agreed a deal to buy Twitter](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2022/04/25/elon-musk-buys-twitter-deal-price-takeover-share-price/) for a whopping $44bn. That cause a little turmoil over in Twitter land, which resulted in expats coming over to Mastodon in their droves.
9 |
10 | Because we're one of the biggest technology focussed instances on the Fediverse, **a lot** of people requested an account on Fosstodon. As you can see from the graphs below, the spike in users from Twitter made our usual activity almost flat line:
11 |
12 | 
13 |
14 | This effectively resulted in a sustained DDoS that lasted for around 36 hours. As you can imagine, that was a lot of fun for myself and the team.
15 |
16 | Here's the details of what happened during those 36 hours...
17 |
18 | ## Sidekiq limits
19 | Before I get into the detail of what happened, it's important to give you some context as to how communication between instances works on Mastodon from a technical perspective. The whole thing is more complicated that I mention below, but it will give you the gist of what I'm waffling on about when we get into the detail.
20 |
21 | Sidekiq is critical to keeping a Mastodon server running smoothly; it's what allows a Mastodon instance to scale and is where we struggled during Musk-gate. Sidekiq has threads that allow for multiple jobs to be run concurrently. These jobs deal with the communication between instances on the Fediverse.
22 |
23 | For example, let's say that I have 1,000 followers spread over 20 instances. If I post something, Fosstodon will need to let those 20 instances know that I have created a new post, so they can fetch it and show it to whichever users on that instance follow me.
24 |
25 | This sounds like a lot of work, right? But an instance with a couple of threads could easily do this in a few seconds, but scale that up to over 20,000 users and it's **a lot** of activity. So before the influx, Fosstodon had 25 Sidekiq threads to deal with the load.
26 |
27 | If the threads become overwhelmed then Sidekiq maintains a queue that Mastodon will chug through as and when it can.
28 |
29 | Under normal load, our 25 Sidekiq threads would max out at around 300 jobs in the queue, which would easily be cleared well within a minute. Can you see where this is going, folks?
30 |
31 | {: .notice}
32 | If you want to learn more about scaling a Mastodon server, take a look at [the official docs](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/scaling/).
33 |
34 | ## Something is wrong here
35 | It all started on Monday evening as the news of Musk's takeover of Twitter broke. It was my good pal and co-admin, [Mike](https://fosstodon.org/@mike) who first noticed that things were feeling at little sluggish on Fosstodon.
36 |
37 | We then started to notice a *significant* uptick in new account requests. To give you an idea, we get around 20 new account requests on an average day. Once the news broke, we started to see approximately 1 new account request **every minute**.
38 |
39 | By way of a side note; every account request is manually reviewed and approved/denied. This is to stop spammers and bots from getting on our server. So you can imagine that this a **a lot** of work for [our small team](/team).
40 |
41 | Anyway, Mike took himself off and had a look at the Sidekiq queue and could see there was a couple thousand jobs in the backlog.
42 |
43 | **Uh oh**.
44 |
45 | The team jumped into action and we carved up the workload:
46 | * Coop, Tay0 and Ru were trying to get through the backlog of new user requests as quick as they could.
47 | * Mike and I were keeping a **very** close eye on the server status and working with our host, [Masto.host](https://masto.host) to see what we could do about the traffic.
48 | * Mike and I were also jumping in and helping with the account requests whenever we had time to.
49 |
50 | ## The first upgrade
51 | We decided to monitor the situation for an hour to see how things go. That first hour flew by and the Sidekiq queue grew from 2,000 to 6,000.
52 |
53 | We already had Hugo from Masto.host lined up and we agreed to increase our Sidekiq threads from 25 to 30 to try and at least stop the backlog from growing further. At this point, lots of users were also starting to notice the sluggish performance and things like a lack of notifications due to them being tied up in the backlog.
54 |
55 | Hugo and I, who are both in Europe, went off to bed and Mike carried on monitoring the situation. I woke up around 05:30 the next morning and checked our Mattermost channel. Here's what I saw in Sidekiq:
56 |
57 | {: .center}
58 | 
59 |
60 | We're still on 30 threads, all of which are busy and we now have a whopping backlog of **157,523 which was rising!**
61 |
62 | ## Upgrade number 2
63 | At this point, we got back in touch with Hugo from Masto.host who explained that there was no more juice left in that server. So if we wanted more threads, we needed to migrate to an entirely new server, which would take around 2-3 hours to complete, but without downtime.
64 |
65 | The team and I took this away and discussed it, but to be honest, there was no discussion to be had. We needed to do this upgrade to keep Fosstodon running. So we agreed and Hugo got to work.
66 |
67 | Now, I must say here, I've worked with a lot of hosting providers in my time, but Hugo and Masto.host is by far **the best** service provider I've ever used. Hugo is always really quick to respond to queries, and is super helpful.
68 |
69 | If you're thinking about starting your own Mastodon instance, I'd **seriously** consider [Masto.Host](https://masto.host) if I were you.
70 |
71 | Around an hour and a half later we were up and running on the new server with **80 Sidekiq threads**. By this time, the backlog looked something like this:
72 |
73 | {: .center}
74 | 
75 |
76 | All 80 threads are going crazy and we're now at **181,080 in the queue!** Thankfully, the 80 threads were enough for us to get on top of the backlog and a couple hours later things were back to normal:
77 |
78 | {: .center}
79 | 
80 |
81 | And there it has remained ever since with normal service resuming, albeit still continuing with a large uptick in traffic.
82 |
83 | ## The fallout
84 | Woooooo, that was a tough 36 hours. I've worked in Cyber Incident Response for a number of years, and this felt somewhat like responding to an incident.
85 |
86 | We managed to prevent Fosstodon from falling over, but to do that, we have had to triple the capacity of the server and our hosting fees have risen from $90/month to $220/month. This means that our [usual 6 month float of funding](/longevity-and-fosstodon/) has reduced to around 3 months.
87 |
88 | Thankfully, a number of members of the community have stepped up and [supported us](/support), which has helped. Coop, Mike and myself have also doubled the contribution we make each month.
89 |
90 | Now we could downgrade again, but we would only be back to square one if we see another significant uptick. So it doesn't seem worth it to us.
91 |
92 | The upshot of all this is that our fantastic community has grown even more and the local timeline is bustling with even more activity than usual.
93 |
94 | So on behalf of the rest of the Fosstodon team, I'd like to welcome all of the new users to the instance, and simultaneously apologise for the rough ride all our members had for that 36 hours or so.
95 |
96 | If you want to throw a few $ in the tip jar, you can [find all the ways to support us here](/support).
97 |
98 |
99 |
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/_posts/2019/2019-07-08-fosstodon-kev-and-snowflakes.md:
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1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Fosstodon, Kev & 'Snowflakes'
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: There's been some drama around Kev's use of the word 'snowflakes'. Here's his response...
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /fosstodon-kev-and-snowflakes/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | #### This post has been written by one of Fosstodon's admins, [Kev](https://fosstodon.org/@kev).
14 |
15 | A few days ago, I wrote the following Toot:
16 |
17 | 
18 |
19 | This post caused a lot of upset across the Fediverse it seems, so I wanted to set the record straight in a longer form. This blog seemed like a good place to do it. I was considering putting this post on my personal blog, but because this subject aligns so closely with Fosstodon, here seemed like the better choice.
20 |
21 | ## What is a "Snowflake"?
22 |
23 | There appears to be a number of connotations associated with the term 'Snowflake' I was unaware of. In this context, I was only meaning people who I consider to be overly sensitive.
24 |
25 | To me, a 'Snowflake' is someone who is very easily offended and will go out of their way to impart their POV on others, whilst simultaneously ignoring every opinion, thought or feeling that contradicts their views.
26 |
27 | When I used the term 'Snowflake' in my Toot, this is what I was referring to, and I thought this was the only meaning for the term.
28 |
29 | In the reactions to my toot, I learned that many people use the term 'Snowflake' differently. As a long-time Fosstodon member, Brandon ([@LinuxLiaison](https://fosstodon.org/@linuxliaison)) put it in his [blog post about the situation](https://bnolet.me/posts/2019/07/implicit-endorsement/),
30 |
31 | > this term snowflake is used in an attempt disparage and invalidate the opinions of individuals perceived as being irrationally sensitive. Oftentimes this term is applied to marginalized folk. Marginalization is the act of treating someone as insignificant or peripheral.
32 |
33 | I did not realise that. Something else I learned after my toot: _[polling shows that many people consider the term 'Snowflake' to be derogatory enough that it would impact their mental health](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/06/dont-call-us-snowflakes-damages-mental-health-say-young-people/)_. If I'd known that, I certainly wouldn't have used the term. I'm sorry that I did, and I apologise to anyone who was upset.
34 |
35 | ## Why did I write the Toot?
36 |
37 | The Toot was a knee-jerk reaction to me getting frustrated by the numbers of Toots that I would personally consider overly sensitive. There was very little thought that went into the Toot, which I think is evident by its content.
38 |
39 | ## What I meant by the Toot?
40 |
41 | The point I was trying to make (badly) was I get frustrated by the amount of posts I see where Fediverse members hang other members out to dry, simply because their opinions differ. People can be quick to judge each other as awful, hateful people—even though most people on the fediverse are generally good people, trying in good faith.
42 |
43 | In fact, it's something I like about both the Fediverse in general and Fosstodon in particular. Although we all still have a lot of work to do, there are far fewer Nazis, racists, and other hateful people in the Fediverse than on other social platforms. Twitter for example.
44 |
45 | Moving from the Fediverse as a whole to Fosstodon itself, I'm particularly proud of the community we've built. As a tech-focused instance, it would be all-to-easy for Fosstodon to have turned into another place for techbros, and left the many, _many_ other individuals who are interested in, and passionate about, technology feeling left out. We could have become just another r/Linux. It's my belief that we've largely avoided that fate, and built a community where anyone interested in tech feels completely welcome to geek out with us, regardless of their background.
46 |
47 | To the extent my toot detracted from that community we've worked hard at building, that's deeply regrettable.
48 |
49 | Perhaps this 'hyper-vigilance'—the calling people Nazis when they're not—is the price we pay for the community we have. If so, it's probably worth it, though it doesn't reduce the harm people experience when falsely accused of being part of a reprehensible group.
50 |
51 | I don't think it would be productive to provide specific examples of the hyper-vigilance I'm thinking of, but I'm sure many have seen this too, and I'm sure you can understand my frustration at the way terms can be over-used.
52 |
53 | ## The fall-out
54 |
55 | The Toot gained a tonne of responses; some positive, some negative. Honestly, there were so many that I didn't get a chance to go through them all.
56 |
57 | However, of the ones I did read, some were extremely abusive; telling me I should die, calling me names, making assumptions about my past, my life, and even my family.
58 |
59 | Anyone who has taken time to get to know me will be certain that I am not a Nazi or a fascist or a racist or any of the other names I was called in the replies to my toot, yet I was labeled every single one of these things.
60 |
61 | ## What I have learned
62 |
63 | To me, the overreaction to my Toot was significant. However, that's probably because I know I am not a Nazi, or a fascist, or a racist, or any of those names I was called. I also had the context of what I was trying to say.
64 |
65 | All things taken within the context above, I stand by my statement that I feel there are a high number of hyper-vigilant people—that is, 'Snowflakes' (under my definition)—on the Fediverse.
66 |
67 | However, Fosstodon is not the place to air those frustrations and I need to keep that crap away from my timeline. It isn't productive, it isn't interesting, and it isn't appropriate.
68 |
69 | This is especially true due to my role as an administrator and moderator of Fosstodon. Looking back on it, I can understand how someone who doesn't know me well might read that toot and think, _"Oh, Kev thinks that everyone is over-sensitive. I bet if I report this person being an ass to me, Kev'll just tell me to grow a thicker skin."_ **Let me be clear: that is incorrect.**
70 |
71 | If someone is violating the Code of Conduct, attacking you, or causing you to feel unwelcome on Fosstodon for any reason, please report them and I, or one of the other mods will look into the situation. We all take moderation very seriously. That's part of the reason we have six moderators spread out across the globe so that we'll nearly always have someone awake and able to respond.
72 |
73 | Given my role as an admin and moderator, I need to hold myself to an even higher standard than I hold everyone else. In future, I will try to not post this kind of Toot. I can't promise perfection. I may well say the wrong thing again. It's easy to make a hash of a nuanced position when you only have 500 characters. But I'll keep trying my best.
74 |
75 | ## What I'm doing now
76 |
77 | I have deleted the original Toot. Unfortunately, there is no way to delete the entire thread. I thought long and hard about keeping the Toot up, as I didn't want to be seen as trying to cover my own tracks. I ultimately decided to delete the Toot for all the reasons stated above. By including the toot in this post, I hope I'm making it clear that I'm not trying to erase anything.
78 |
79 | The team and I realised that our current Code of Conduct needs work. I believe I didn't break the CoC; many disagree, which I respect and understand. The current CoC is vague enough that many people can have strong feelings about what it means or doesn't mean, and that's a problem.
80 |
81 | With that in mind, we will be re-writing the Fosstodon CoC to make it more simple to understand and also to make it less ambiguous. [The team](/the-team) will take the first pass at the new CoC and then we will pass it to the Fosstodon Patrons to provide their input before being published.
82 |
83 | In some ways, this is a growing pain for our instance. In not very long at all, we've grown from an instance of hundreds to one of thousands. When we were smaller, the formal CoC didn't matter so much. We all knew each other well enough to get along. If I'd have posted this same Toot back then, the only people who would have read it would have known me well enough to know what I was talking about.
84 |
85 | That's clearly no longer true, and so we have some decisions to make about the sort of instance we're going to grow into. We know we don't want to become an r/Linux, where toxicity is the order of the day. But do we want to be a place where people generally keep their controversial views to themselves, or do we want to be a place where people, though united by a love of FOSS, freely discuss all of their views? We'll be grappling with those and with other questions over the coming weeks.
86 |
87 | ## Closing
88 |
89 | I apologise for the language I used in my Toot. I shouldn't have used the term 'Snowflake', and I regret doing so. At the same time, I do not apologise for the message, however poorly it was expressed.
90 |
91 | I feel that the Fediverse—for all its strengths—has a problem with hyper-vigilance and over-sensitivity. There are genuine problems, and people should call them out (and report them to their mods). But there are also other times when people experience hyper-vigilance and react to a disagreement in opinion as a personal attack.
92 |
93 | Or at least that's my view. I understand that many disagree, and that's OK.
94 |
95 | I think everyone needs to be a little more tolerant, myself included.
96 |
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13 |
14 | ## TL;DR
15 | If you don't want to read about the back story, here's the TL;DR (too long, didn't read):
16 | * Over the last 10 days we have served over 140 *million* requests
17 | * The number of members on Fosstodon has doubled from 20,000 to 40,000+
18 | * All of [the team](/team) have been pulling a second full-time job to cope with the demand. So much so that we ended up taking shifts!
19 | * We have had to do a number of server upgrades, which has resulted in our hosting costs rising from around $250/month to $1,000/month
20 | * Mike and I were [interviewed for WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-users-mastodon-meltdown/)
21 | * Microsoft's lawyers reached out to us to take down an account, clearly a sign that we've made it 🤪
22 | * Our community have been fantastically understanding by supporting us through all the slow downs and outages, as we've have constantly fought to keep the lights on, and also with their financial support. **Thank you, everyone.**
23 |
24 | Actually, I don't really need to go into anymore detail, those are all the salient points. Needless to say it's been a horrendous few weeks and we're still seeing a lot of traffic, but that may just be the new norm.
25 |
26 | I've updated [our funding page](/about/#current-funding) with a breakdown of what our costs and funding currently look like. Thanks to all the financial support, we have managed to keep our head above water. Just about.
27 |
28 | We currently have 4.7 months worth of funding, so we're still a ways off our [6 month funding target](/longevity-and-fosstodon/). If you want to throw a few bucks into the tip jar, we'd be every so grateful:
29 |
30 | {% include donate-buttons.html %}
31 |
32 | ## Wrapping up
33 |
34 | Thanks to Melon Tusk, things on Fosstodon look brighter than ever. We have a growing and even more diverse community of passionate techies, and we're really proud of that.
35 |
36 | Finally, I wanted to say thanks to all of you, our members, for the continued support. Fosstodon would be nothing without you fine people. ❤️
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/_posts/2020/2020-04-01-moving-away-from-cloudflare.md:
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1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Moving Away From Cloudflare
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: A lot of people in open source don't like Cloudflare, so we stopped using it.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /moving-away-from-cloudflare/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | We were recently asked by a member of our community why we were using Cloudflare as the [Content Delivery Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network) for Fosstodon.
14 |
15 | This was a valid concern considering the [numerous privacy concerns](https://git.nixnet.xyz/you/stop_cloudflare) that many people have when it comes to Cloudflare, especially when it comes to their free TLS certificates and what is basically MiTM TLS inspection.
16 |
17 | Now, we want to be *very* clear here **we do not use Cloudflare for our TLS certificate**. That is provided by Let's Encrypt. The only data that is handled by the Cloudflare CDN are the media attachments that our users post.
18 |
19 | However, when our members raise a concern, we listen and we try to come up with a solution. We host Fosstodon with [Masto.Host](https://masto.host), which uses the Cloudflare CDN for media by default. Being the great service provider that they are, they give their customers the option to use a different CDN. So we started looking into alternatives...
20 |
21 | ## BunnyCDN
22 |
23 | Kev already uses BunnyCDN for the CDN on his personal website - they're a known quantity and have a good reputation. So we decided to migrate from Cloudflare to BunnyCDN.
24 |
25 | Now, BunnyCDN isn't a free service and it may get quite expensive for us to host with them, but we will have to wait and see. We're estimating that the additional cost for BunnyCDN will be around $20/month based on our current bandwidth usage.
26 |
27 | Fosstodon is a popular instance, and we generate a lot of traffic. As we grow, that traffic will grow too. At the moment we're funded pretty well and have enough in the donation pot to absorb this additional cost, but if you want to help chip in to keep Fosstodon alive you can [help support us](/support) in a number of ways.
28 |
29 | ## Conclusion
30 |
31 | We will always take the feedback we receive from our community seriously, and we really hope this post proves that.
32 |
33 | BunnyCDN is live and serving your content right now. Hopefully the transition has been a seamless one for you. If you do notice a slight slowdown over the next few days, please bear with us as it will take some time for the cache to build up across the new CDN.
34 |
35 | 
36 |
37 | We will, of course, keep you guys update about how we're finding BunnyCDN. Also, the details of all our funding and how we use can be found on [our about page](/about).
38 |
39 | **If you have any feedback, please reach out to one of the team, or [contact us](/contact).**
40 |
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/_posts/2021/2021-06-29-Wow...just wow....md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Wow...just wow...
3 | author: cooper
4 | description: Recently, we asked for your support to make sure our overhead was covered and to help us prepare for anticipated growth.
5 | permalink: /wow-just-wow/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | ## You answered the call
10 |
11 | The Fosstodon Community's response was staggering! We received a few one time donations, in addition to increasing our monthly support via Liberpay and Patreon. Not only that but, we even had people show support that aren't part of Fosstodon! How incredible is that!? If you didn't get a chance to show some support, you can look [here](https://hub.fosstodon.org/support/) for ways to help out.
12 |
13 | ## How's it looking?
14 |
15 | At the time of our last hub post we were receiving $130.00/month with an overhead of $115.00/month. Since then, our Liberpay and Patreon monthly support has increased to $309.60! This will allow us to make preparations for an anticipated increase in monthly expenses, as the community grows and overhead costs increase (CDN traffic, server specs, etc). Here's a [link](https://hub.fosstodon.org/about/#current-funding) to a summary of our current funding and expenses.
16 |
17 | ## What about the excess?
18 |
19 | As always, any surplus funds (above our 6 month operating expense target) will be used for supporting open source projects. Once we have enough saved up, we will ask you to give us some input and vote on a project.
20 |
21 | If you’re an active Patron, you'll have the opportunity to cast a vote as to which project(s) will receive the donation(s). If you want to sign up to support Fosstodon and other projects, you can use this [link](https://hub.fosstodon.org/support/). Our Patreon tiers start at just $1/month.
22 |
23 | ## Where do we go from here?
24 |
25 | Well, that's entirely up to you. At the current rate, along with the one-time donations, we've already been able to hit our 6 month operating cost goal. Currently, we're looking over some improvements and upgrades we've anticipated for the community, based on increasing member numbers and traffic. When those changes become necessary, we'll want to ensure we're covering 6 months of the updated expenses, as well. If we continue to take on more supporters, we'll be able to meet those goals sooner and start supporting more open source projects. Beyond that, more funding equals more projects supported. It'll be like a continuous circle of Fosstodon Community awesomeness!
26 |
27 | ## Final thoughts
28 |
29 | As the community is preparing to crest the 19,000 member milestone, the Fosstodon Staff couldn't be more humbled from the support that has been shown by the community. We are so proud to be part of such an amazing family (yes, you're all like a massive family of really great people). We're glad you chose to be part of this with us as we continue to grow and support free and open source projects.
30 |
31 | Thanks for your continued support and helping us make sure Fosstodon is one of the best Mastodon instances to be part of!
32 |
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/_posts/2019/2019-06-07-longevity-and-fosstodon.md:
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1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: Longevity and Fosstodon
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: We're not planning on going anywhere, but if we do, we have a plan.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /longevity-and-fosstodon/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | Mastodon is great, but one of the issues with a federated social network such as this, is that users need to be sure their instance isn't going to disappear overnight. This has happened on a number of occasions to my knowledge, and it leaves the instance's members high and dry.
14 |
15 | They then have to find a new instance, migrate and inform all of their old followers. Problem is, if their old instance is already gone, there's no way for them to inform their followers on the old instance.
16 |
17 | Bad times all round, I think you will agree.
18 |
19 | This has spawned a number of questions from our members around Fosstodon’s future and how it would look if we were to shut down the instance.
20 |
21 | ## Our commitment to you
22 |
23 | First of all, we do not intend on shutting Fosstodon down any time soon. Mike and I both have full admin access to the instance, the web hosting, the domain hosting and DNS config, the PayPal account and everything else in between.
24 |
25 | This prevents the 'hit by a bus' scenario, but it also provides bandwidth. Managing an instance is a lot of work, so Mike and I both share the workload, and we have a team of awesome moderators that help keep the community in check (not that it really needs it as you're all awesome).
26 |
27 | ### Funding
28 |
29 | The project is well funded, you can [see the details on our about page](/about). We currently receive more money from our [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) account that it costs us to run the instance. This means that Mike and I don't have the financial overhead of keeping the instance going (although we do both contribute via Patreon every month).
30 |
31 | Any additional funds are collected and then donated to an open source project of the community's choosing.
32 |
33 | ### What if we do decide to close down?
34 |
35 | So we're good in terms of staffing and finances, so it's very unlikely that Fosstodon will close down. However, if we do decide to close the instance down, **our commitment to you is that we will provide at least 3 months notice**.
36 |
37 | This should give our members enough time to find a new instance, migrate and ensure their followers know about it too. We hope that in the future a full migration option will be added to Mastodon, so users can fully migrate their accounts. In lieu of that process though, we will always do what we can to support our members.
38 |
39 | ## Conclusion
40 |
41 | Obviously Mike and I want Fosstodon to continue to grow from strength to strength, so we have no intentions of shutting Fosstodon down. We're healthy in terms of finances and staffing, and if the worst was to happen, we would give you guys plenty of notice.
42 |
43 | Hopefully this post will help to allay any concerns our members have. **TL;DR - we got your back!**
44 |
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/_posts/2022/2022-08-02-domain-expired.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Our Domain Expired and it Took Out All Our Services
3 | author: kev
4 | description: A couple of days ago fosstodon.org expired and all our services went down. Here's how it happened.
5 | permalink: /our-domain-expired/
6 | layout: post
7 | ---
8 |
9 | It's Saturday evening. It's been a busy day, what with the kids being off school and all. My wife and I are preparing dinner for the family and honestly, I can't be bothered; all I want to do is sit on the sofa and relax.
10 |
11 | Something compelled me to check my phone, where I saw an email from our community manager, [Cooper](https://fosstodon.org/@cooper) that said...
12 |
13 | > Hey bud,
14 | >
15 | > I think we might have an issue with our domain provider. Nothing is resolving/connecting on the naked domain or any of the subs (Mattermost, Hub, etc).
16 | >
17 | > Best Regards,
18 | >
19 | > Matt Cooper
20 |
21 | So I made my excuses to my wife, booted up my laptop and checked myself. Yep, it was all down.
22 |
23 | **Bollocks!**
24 |
25 | My first thought was maybe it was a hosting problem, but Cooper has already said our [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) Mattermost server was down, as well as this very Hub that you're reading now. So it couldn't have been a hosting issue, as they're all hosted in different places.
26 |
27 | *It must be DNS*, I thought. So I fired up my terminal to check...
28 |
29 | ```
30 | % host -a fosstodon.org
31 | Trying "fosstodon.org"
32 | Trying "fosstodon.org"
33 | Host fosstodon.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
34 | ```
35 |
36 | **Double bollocks!**
37 |
38 | *Where the hell has our DNS gone?* Our domain and DNS are provided by NameCheap, so I logged into our account only to find that `fosstodon.org` was listed as `EXPIRED`.
39 |
40 | **TRIPLE BOLLOCKS!**
41 |
42 | ## Grace period
43 | Luckily for me, the domain had *just* expired and we were still within our grace period, so we hadn't lost the domain. Can you imagine what would have happened if someone else had nabbed it!
44 |
45 | I re-registered the domain as quickly as I possibly could, and 15 minutes or so later, our services started coming back up. *Fantastic!* Crisis averted.
46 |
47 | ### But how did this happen?
48 | Well, it's very simple, dear reader. **I'm an idiot.** I had my personal card assigned to the account, and it expired a few months back. Needless to say I didn't update the card details, so the domain couldn't renew.
49 |
50 | I don't *think* I received any alerts about it. But saying that, I own lots of domains and get emails about renewals all the time, so it's likely I just dismissed the email.
51 |
52 | ## Fixing the problem
53 | Instead of updating my card and risking being back in this situation when my current card expires, I flipped the payment service to PayPal, which is where all our funds are stored anyway. So hopefully, this won't happen again.
54 |
55 | Apologies for the completely preventable outage, folks. Yes, I'm an idiot. Yes, this was avoidable. Yes, I shouldn't be trusted with this kind of thing.
56 |
57 | {: .notice}
58 | If you want to help keep the lights on at Fosstodon HQ, you can [support the project here](/support).
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/_posts/2019/2019-12-17-we-need-your-support-please.md:
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1 | ---
2 | # This is the page title
3 | title: We Need Your Support Please
4 | author: kev
5 | # This is the description that shows in the page header
6 | description: We want to make sure Fosstodon stays around for the foreseeable future, but we need your help.
7 | # Set a permalink here
8 | permalink: /we-need-your-support-please/
9 | # Don't change this
10 | layout: post
11 | ---
12 |
13 | #### Fosstodon has nearly 7,000 members!
14 |
15 | I think it's fair to say that when Mike and I started Fosstodon back in 2017, we didn't think we would be _the_ biggest FOSS based instance on the Fediverse. That's just awesome and we love the fact that our little corner of the Fediverse is growing so well.
16 |
17 | However, as our community grows, our hosting requirements do too. Over the next day or so we will be upgrading our servers again to ensure we continue to have the great performance and uptime that our members have come to expect from us. The problem is, as the servers grow, so do the hosting costs. After the upgrade our running costs will be approximately $90 per month. I'm sure most of you will agree that this is quite a lot of money for something that started out as a pet project for two guys.
18 |
19 | ## We need your help
20 |
21 | Our monthly Patreon income (which includes monthly donations from both Mike and I) is $87. So we're already running Fosstodon at a loss. We're also growing fast, so the next time we need to upgrade, that loss is going to get bigger and bigger. A loss which Mike and I will need to fund personally, and we will be happy to do so as we're so proud of what we have all built with Fosstodon.
22 |
23 | **That $87/month, which Patreon take a cut out of, comes from 30 glorious Fosstodonians - but that is just 0.42% of our members.**
24 |
25 | We said in our post about [the longevity of Fosstodon](/longevity-and-fosstodon) that we would like to keep 6 months of hosting fees as a float, then anything over and above this will be donated to open source projects. With our Patreon income being so close to our expenditure, we don't think we will be able to donate to other projects if our income doesn't increase inline with our size.
26 |
27 | Like I said, we currently receive funding from 0.42% of our members. If just 2% of our members signed up for our lowest Patreon tier of $1/month, we would be all set for the foreseeable future.
28 |
29 | We currently have around 10 months worth of funding in our Paypal account, so we're not desperate yet, but we wanted to canvas for help before we get desperate. The last thing we want to see is this incredible community of fantastic people fall by the wayside.
30 |
31 | #### If you feel you get enjoyment from Fosstodon and can spare just $1/month, it really would make a huge difference to the longevity of the Fosstodon project.
32 |
33 | [ ](https://liberapay.com/fosstodon)
34 |
35 | [](https://patreon.com/fosstodon)
36 |
37 | [](https://paypal.me/kevquirk)
38 |
39 | ## Thank you
40 |
41 | We wanted to end this post with a quick thank you to **all** of our members, whether you donate or not, Fosstodon would literally be nothing without you guys. Thank you all for everything that you do, and remember, **be excellent to each other.**
42 |
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/financial.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Finances | Fosstodon Hub
3 | description: Where Our Money Goes And How To Support Us
4 | permalink: /finances/
5 | layout: default
6 | ---
7 | ## Thank you!!
8 |
9 | We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our community members who have generously contributed through donations. Your support means the world to us. We want to emphasize that while we greatly appreciate any donations, you should never feel obligated in any way. Your participation in our community, whether through contributions or simply being a part of it, is valued above all else. We are here to provide a space that you can enjoy, and your involvement is a choice, not obligation. Thank you for being a vital part of our community.
10 |
11 | ## How we assign funds
12 |
13 | When you make a donation, either by [Patreon](https://patreon.com/fosstodon) or [PayPal](https://paypal.me/FosstodonFoundation), it eventually ends up in our PayPal account. With this funding we do a couple of things:
14 |
15 | 1. We keep a 6 month float of running costs; so we know we have funding in place should we need extra cash for things like an unexpected server upgrade.
16 | 2. Anything over and above our running costs is accumulated in to donations to open source projects that our Patrons get to choose. We tend to save these funds up so we can make meaningful donations – usually a minimum of $100/donation.
17 |
18 | ## Project donations process
19 |
20 | Once we have enough funds saved up to make a donation to a project, we will create a Patron-only post on our Patreon page, which include details on how you can recommend a project for donation.
21 |
22 | Once we have some recommendations from our Patrons, [the team](/team) will create a short list. Once the short list is created, we will create a survey so all of our members can vote on which project should get the donation.
23 |
24 | Again, this will stay open for a week and the project with the most votes at the end will get the donation.
25 |
26 | We will then post details of any donations made to this page.
27 |
28 | ## Current running costs
29 |
30 | | Details | Amount (USD) |
31 | |:------------------------------:|:------------:|
32 | | Fosstodon hosting: | $2,050 |
33 | | DNS hosting: | $20.00 |
34 | | Mattermost server: | $15.00 |
35 | | Translation server: | $8.00 |
36 | | Bitwarden: | $5.00 |
37 | | **Current monthly operating costs:** | **$2,098** |
38 |
39 | ### Donations we have made
40 |
41 | | Donation Recipient | Date | Donation Amount |
42 | |:------------------:|:----:|:---------------:|
43 | | Mastodon | 04 Mar 19 | $150 |
44 | | Elementary OS | 17 Jun 19 | $100 |
45 | | Let's Encrypt | 17 Jun 19 | $100 |
46 | | Pixelfed | 11 Jul 20 | $200 |
47 | | Software Freedom Conservancy | 11 Jul 20 | $200 |
48 | | Electronic Frontier Foundation | 19 Nov 20 | $200 |
49 | | Tor Project | 19 Nov 20 | $200 |
50 | | postmarketOS | 24 Nov 21 | $300 |
51 | | European Digital Rights | 24 Nov 21 | $300 |
52 | | Mstdn.social | 20 July 24 | $412 |
53 |
54 | **Total donations made: $2,162**
55 |
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/_posts/2025/2025-06-04-brandon-and-kris-join-new-admins.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Brandon and Kris joining as admins
3 | author: gina
4 | description: Announcing Brandon and Kris as two additional admins to the Fosstodon team
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | Hi all, 👋
9 |
10 | We're very happy to announce that our call for a fellow admin has yielded not 1, but 2 very qualified people from our community. 🥳🥳 Brandon and Kris will be stepping up as admins, together with Gina. They'll introduce themselves in this post.
11 |
12 | ## An intro from Brandon
13 |
14 | Hey everyone, I'm [Brandon](https://fosstodon.org/@btp).
15 |
16 | I'll start with a little bit about myself. I'm a 35 year old NOC sys admin from Colorado living with my wonderful life partner and our adorable dog [Millie](https://pixelfed.social/p/bdont/814192090567300607). I'm new to the tech world professionally, getting my current position three years ago, and currently working towards a software developer role. Previously I was a political science major, but never finished my degree. I'd like to get back to school and pivot to a comp sci degree one day. Most of my free time is spent playing ttrpgs, Magic: The Gathering, watching campy sitcoms, or working on personal projects.
17 |
18 | Fosstodon is the first instance I joined after creating my first fediverse account on mastodon.social. The passionate and friendly community drew me in, and I've met great pocket friends here that I still chat with today. After Kev and Mike stepped down, I wanted to do my part to keep this community alive and show the rest of the fediverse the welcoming and friendly place Fosstodon really is, and I'm glad that Gina and the rest of the team put their trust me to take on a co-admin role. I hope our users here and across other instances will as well. I'll do my best to not let you down.
19 |
20 | I share Gina's vision for Fosstodon as a place for FOSS enthusiasts, tinkerers, hobbyests, and anyone else who's passionate about software and technology to come and share it with the rest of the fediverse and the internet. We also want to continue to make our instance a safer place; to do this, we're going to continue to take good-faith feedback, constructive criticism, and listen to what the users have to say.
21 |
22 |
23 | ## An intro from Kris
24 |
25 | Hello friends, I'm [Kris](https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain)
26 |
27 | A little bit about me. I'm a 51 year old dad living in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon in the beautilful Pacific Northwest. I am dedicated family man, husband, and father, who practices Buddhism and has a daily meditation practice. I enjoy gardening, powerlifting, exploring new places to see and to eat with my family, and supporting our local football/soccer team, the Portland Thorns.
28 |
29 | Professionally, I am the Community Manager for the OpenSearch Project, OpenSearch Software Foundation, and technical steering committee. I've been in the tech world for a long time with experience in community engagement, digital marketing, support, and release management. For the past few years, I've been able to travel the world and meet so many people from the open source community either at conferences or the global user group community we've been building. The open source world is a truly unique place.
30 |
31 | I find connecting people through community to be very fulfilling and the Fosstodon community is a great place to do this. I want to continue to make Fosstodon a safe environment for all of us to meet, to share ideas, and to get to know one another.
32 |
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/_posts/2025/2025-07-01-introducing-the-fosstodon-foundation.md:
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1 | ---
2 | title: Introducing the Fosstodon Foundation
3 | author: kris
4 | description: Announcing the Fosstodon Foundation!
5 | layout: post
6 | ---
7 |
8 | ### Introducing the Fosstodon Foundation
9 |
10 | Today we are excited to share some news for the open source and decentralized community: the establishment of the Fosstodon Foundation. 🥳 The foundation is dedicated to fos(s)tering a friendly, inclusive, online space for open source people to come together, exchange ideas, and share common interests.
11 |
12 | The newly formed Fosstodon Foundation formalizes this mission, ensuring the community has the legal and organizational structure to grow sustainably. The core objectives include:
13 |
14 | - Enabling a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment for discussions about open-source software, technology, and digital culture.
15 | - Supporting the fediverse by maintaining a community-driven space.
16 | - Providing financial and operational stability through donations, grants, and other funding mechanisms.
17 | - Being a place where like-minded people share with one another in the spirit of open source collaboration.
18 |
19 |
20 | ### Why a Foundation matters
21 |
22 | Foundations play a crucial role in open source and decentralized projects. They provide governance, financial oversight, and legal protection; all of which help communities thrive without relying on corporate ownership. By establishing the Fosstodon Foundation, we are ensuring that:
23 |
24 | - Fosstodon remains independent and aligned with its original mission.
25 | - Donations and funding are managed transparently, with clear financial reporting.
26 | - Long-term sustainability is prioritized, so Fosstodon users can happily toot for years to come.
27 |
28 |
29 | ### The near future
30 |
31 | The foundation’s board members ([Gina Plat](https://fosstodon.org/@gina), [Kris Freedain](https://fosstodon.org/@krisfreedain), and [Brandon Phillips](https://fosstodon.org/@btp)) will oversee governance, financial management, and strategic direction.
32 |
33 | - Financial accountability: Annual statements will be prepared by the board.
34 | - Responsible governance: As a legally recognized nonprofit, Fosstodon operates under statutes that define our mission, structure, and responsibilities. Amendments to these statutes require a two-thirds majority vote.
35 | - Transparency in dissolution: A foundation means easier continuity. If the foundation should ever wind down, Fosstodon commits itself to a 6 month operational period and will distribute remaining funds among other open source projects.
36 | - Community-driven decisions: More on this very soon!
37 |
38 | ### We’re glad you’re here
39 |
40 | We’re very excited that Fosstodon has become an inclusive hub for developers, sysadmins, OSPO-members, community managers, and FOSS enthusiasts. With this new foundation in place, our community is set up for long-term sustainability, and can grow further with stability, transparency, and inclusivity at its core.
41 |
42 | If you’re passionate about open source, decentralized tech, or just want a friendly corner of the internet to discuss nerdy things, we encourage you to check out Fosstodon and consider supporting the foundation’s work.
43 |
44 | Here’s to the future of our community! 🥂
45 |
46 |
47 | Signed,