Speak your mind with respect. Boston, MA area, but open to all. Posting size is 12K characters because you have interesting things to say. Cloudflare aggressive AI Bot blocking. Threads federating.

This is a general-purpose Mastodon server administrated in the Greater Boston, Massachusetts area. All are welcome to sign up, so long as the rules are followed.

We federate with Threads, some do not. Read our Threads FAQ.

We use Cloudflare to block artificial intelligence (AI) bots, crawlers, and scrapers from scraping your content for training large language models (LLM) to recreate posts without your permission.

While most Mastodon servers are limited to 500 character posts, here posts can be up to 12,000 characters because we think you have important things to write.

We also relay with over 1,500 other servers, some very large. This means we share each other's posts and accounts in real time. Your posts go to those servers immediately, even if there are no follow relationships. Servers without relay relationships only share posts when there are follow relationships. Your audience is large here, and you see more posts than you would on servers that do not relay.

You can see the incoming messages arriving here from all over the Fediverse from the relay by going to our Live feed

We do not secretly shadow-ban our own users ("limit" or "silence"). We will always notify the account owner of the action and the reason.

When signing up, you must read the quick, short, set of rules presented to you. Requesting an account is confirmation that you have read and agree to abide by our rules.

Donations:

Donations are appreciated, but are never required! They go toward supporting this Mastodon instance and the other apps that I run, which are now averaging about $300/month in total. Besides this Mastodon server, I also run:

Peertube (a Fediverse YouTube equivalent): https://my-sunshine.video

Piefed (a Fediverse Reddit equivalent): https://feddit.online

Friendica (like Mastodon + Facebook + Reddit in one and also integrates Bluesky, Tumblr, and RSS Feeds into the Home Feed): https://my-place.social

BlueSky PDS (Private Data Server) https://blue-ocean.social: If you are interested in a Bluesky account where your data and identity are not kept on their corporate server, but rather on the blue-ocean.social server, email Jerry@blue-ocean.social and I will send an invitation code. Your Bluesky account will be named similar to mine, @jerry.blue-ocean.social

Where you can donate

Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/JerryL

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JerryFediverse

Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/JerryFediverse

Bitcoin: bc1qqgjydw28athy9jare342eh703jagmwecmmgemm
ETH: 0x07aD621C7661f75123b0667407C007B4A3acb5c6

Enjoy!

Excellent Mastodon FAQ

Tips on using Mastodon

Lots of information on how to use Mastodon

Technical information and work log

Important to know to get the most from Mastodon, is to understand the difference between hashtag use on Twitter and on Mastodon.

You can follow hashtags in Mastodon so that any posts visible to this server that have the hashtag, will appear in your timeline. You don't have to search for a hashtag as you do on Twitter.

Therefore, using hashtags in Mastodon is important if you want people in other instances to see your post. And it's a great way to be discovered and to discover other interesting people.

You can follow a hashtag by clicking on it within a post and then clicking the "+" in the top-right corner.

On this server, the maximum number of characters in a post is 12,000. The Mastodon default is 500, but I bumped it higher. Also, note that a URL in a Mastodon post always counts as 23 characters, regardless of its true length. URL shorteners are not required for Mastodon posts.

Leaving Twitter? Add your Mastodon account name to your Twitter profile, so others can find you on Mastodon. Your Mastodon account name looks something like this: @jerry@hear-me.social

DMCA Takedown Notices: We adhere to the rules regarding DMCA Intellectual Property takedown notices. Please send notices to DMCA@hear-me.social. This email address is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office

This server prohibits posting copyright-protected materials, and we will remove these materials when notified. Anyone found posting copyrighted materials may or may not be notified before having their account suspended. A suspended account has 30 days to contact us, at admin@hear-me.social, to appeal.

This server prohibits posting Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). Images are actively scanned. Their mathematical hashes are compared to the hashes of known CSAM images in the NCMEC.ORG database. Any matches are automatically reported, and the image is blocked. Nobody, nor any software, looks at the actual images, it's just a mathematical calculation on the bits.

While I do not believe anyone on this server posts CSAM material, since we relay with over 1,500 other servers, it is necessary to scan the images the server is exposed to.

1. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, threats, doxing, trolling, or ageism. No attacks on someone's religion, culture, language, or country of origin. Don't be insulting and argumentative.To be here, you must be nice to people.
2. No spreading of misinformation. To clarify: Misinformation includes easily disproved beliefs like vaccines cause autism, the earth if flat, birds aren't real, etc. Misinformation is not political beliefs that do not align with yours.
3. Do not spam or create spam accounts
4. No impersonating people or brands. Satire must be clearly labeled
5. Do not post Copyrighted materials. We adhere to DMCA take-down notices. See our DMCA policy at the bottom of https://hear-me.social/about. DMCA Registration number: DMCA-1044123
6. No ads without permission. Accounts that appear to be created just to promote products and websites will be suspended. In some cases, we may allow the account to remain, but may limit the account.
7. NO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE POSTINGS (CSAM)! Be aware that we have Cloudflare automatically scan cached images for CSAM violations. They match mathematical image hashes to a database of known CSAM hashes.
8. Posting nude photos or controversial pictures and posts without content warnings and appropriate hashtags is not allowed. Also, using inappropriate hashtags to unfairly extend the reach of a post is also not allowed
9. Targeted misgendering, deadnaming, or promotion of so-called "conversion therapy" is prohibited.
10. Content created by others must be attributed, and use of AI must be disclosed. Profiles that only post AI-generated content will be suspended
11. You must be at least 13-years-old to open an account here

1. artisan.chat: suspension
2. asso.lgbt: suspension
3. blackqueer.life: suspension
4. cathode.church: suspension
5. krgr.social: suspension
6. lacommu.net: suspension
7. mastodon.art: suspension
8. mastodon.sandwich.net: suspension
9. neuropaganes.masto.host: suspension
10. nileane.fr: suspension
11. old.mermaid.town: suspension
12. rage.love: suspension
13. scintilla.social: suspension
14. simcha.lgbt: suspension
15. social.catppuccin.com: suspension
16. spanner.works: suspension
17. toot.mrah.live: suspension