This Mastodon instance is for people interested in technology, particularly online privacy and open source software.
Refugees from mastodon.technology welcome!
Discussions aren't limited to technology though, because tech folks shouldn't be limited to technology either!

Welcome

Gladtech.social was started in October 2022 to create a place for people to go after the beloved technology-focused Mastodon instance, mastodon.technology, shut down. After using mastodon.technology myself for so long (and having a great time!), I felt like I should try to give something back to the Fediverse. So here it is, a new instance. I hope many kind and thoughtful people on the internet will find a new home here.

- Jeff

Audience

This instance is aimed at the general technology crowd. Topics often discussed here often include software, hardware, firmware, shareware... Anything ending in -ware, really. Feel free to talk about $DAY_JOB, weekend hobbies, and anything in between.

If you're looking for more focus than all of technology (I know, right?), then feel free to pay attention to online privacy and open source software in particular. That's where the instance name comes from. AdTech and the larger ecosystem of surveillance capitalism and the attention economy are a pox on all our houses. GladTech represents a kind of response to that pox. An antibody, if you will. Don't contribute to AdTech. Instead, contribute to software that makes people glad. Contribute to GladTech.

Don't feel like you need to limit discussions to tech topics only though. Everyone needs a break from that now and then. Really, anyone who is willing to abide by the rules of conduct is welcome here, and their conversations are welcome too. If you're looking for non-tech ideas, pictures of cats are almost always welcome! #caturday

Customizations

Gladtech.social uses a customized version of Mastodon!

For now, I've only made a few minor tweaks:

• Toots can be up to 2048 characters in length. Because powers of two are awesome!
• The "Publish" button has been renamed back to "Toot", because we all deserve a little whimsy in our lives.

But in the future, I might get a little more ambitious. I'm thinking about adding encryption to the DMs someday. But I'm not quite ready for that yet.

Anyway, all the customizations for this instance can be found on the Codeberg account:
https://codeberg.org/cuchazinteractive/Mastodon

Sustainability

AKA: Will this instance still be around X years from now?

Predicting the future is hard, but here's some more information. Maybe that will help.

Renting cloud resources to run the instance costs money, and Mastodon uses a lot of resources apparently. The last time this section was updated (Dec 2022), the server had about 30 active users and a monthly cost of about 27/mo USD. The instance is running on a small self-managed virtual private server (VPS) at the moment. It's about the least expensive way I can think to do it. At this level of cost, I'm happy to keep funding maintenance costs out-of-pocket. It costs about as much as a couple TV channel subscriptions. Consider it my donation to the fediverse.

Someday though, if enough members hang out here, I might not be able to keep paying the bill personally. I don't yet know how big of a bill it will take to tap me out or how long it will take for the instance to grow that big, if ever. If that ever happens though, I'll open up the instance for donations from members. I've seen that model work well in other places, so we can consider that here if the time comes.

Rules of Conduct

• No advertising or excessive promotion.
• No bots, unless they're cute, funny, or useful. Bots should avoid posting to the public timeline.
• No pornography.
• No gore or graphic violence.
• Content that is borderline NSFW or could be construed as NSFW at a glance should be put behind a CW (Content Warning).
• No racism.
• No sexism.
• No discrimination based on gender, sexual minority, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or national origin.
• No xenophobia, nationalism, casteism, or fascism; no sympathizing with or advocating for these things.
• No sexual depictions of children.
• No holocaust denialism, no Nazi symbolism, no promotion of National Socialism.
• No stalking or harassment. In general, if someone asks you to stop interacting with them, then stop.
• Stalking, harassment, hate speech, or doxing that is posted to other instances or on other social media platforms is still grounds for having your account terminated here.
• No posting (or threatening to post) other people's personally identifying information ("doxing").
• No unwelcome sexual attention.
• No public or private oppressive language or actions.
• No promotion of conspiracy theories (eg anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-COVID).
• No unsolicited advice to strangers.
• No advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behaviour.
• No other unethical conduct.
• No scraping content from web interface or API.

To protect the free speech of users belonging to marginalized groups, this instance does not federate with overtly fascist instances. Additionally, we will refuse to federate with instances that themselves choose to federate with fascist instances.

Our rules of conduct and instance block lists were forked from mastodon.technology, so a huge thanks to Ash and the moderation team there for sharing their great work with everyone!

Handling harassment

If you are being harassed, please report the user using the "…" button and then "Report."

If you engage in harassing behavior, the moderator may take any action they deem appropriate, such as a warning or an expulsion.

The above rules may change at any time, and you may be banned at any time based on the moderators' judgment.

Privacy policy

What will we do with your data? Nothing. How will you be influenced by advertisers? You won't. How will we aggregate your data in order to improve your service… none of that.

We will never share your data with anyone else, except in the case of valid legal requests, if it comes to that. (Hopefully it won't come to that!) Similarly, users and third parties are forbidden from scraping content from the instance's web interface or API; you are required to respect robots.txt files.

More privacy information about this instance:

• HTTPS is used everywhere thanks to Let's Encrypt.
• No ads or trackers.
• Links are direct URLs rather than tracking redirects.
• Understand though that this instance is run by a human administrator (Jeff), and (as is the case with all Mastodon servers) that administrator potentially has access to your data, including DMs. The back-end is also not encrypted. If this is not okay with you, this might not be the instance for you.

Also understand that Mastodon has no real privacy guarantees. Specifically, Mastodon does not offer end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Mastodon is only really designed for communication in "the public square". If, instead, you want to have private conversations, consider using an app with stronger privacy guarantees, like Signal.

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