De Vlaamse/Belgische Mastodon instance.

Note: this info below is subjected to change as time continues. Those (significant) changes will be communicated in the announcements and by @hello@mastodon.vlaanderen.

Last update: Wednesday 21 February 2024

Change of ownership and server migrations

In January 2024, the admins and sponsors of this instance declared their intention to stop this instance. In order to keep it alive nonetheless, the team behind Mastodon Belgium offered to migrate this instance to their infrastructure to keep it alive. This migration is now nearly complete.

Welcome!

The team behind this Mastodon Instance is committed to bring you the best possible experience of the decentralized Twitter alternative called Mastodon. This instance is provided mainly for those who live in the Benelux area. But others who live in other countries are welcome too! As long as they keep their public posts in Dutch, French, German, or English to make moderation easier among other things. We - the admins of mastodon.vlaanderen - want to aim for a 'localized' experience for our (Benelux) users as much as possible.

If you want more information regarding this instance, feel free to drop an e-mail to hello[at]mastodon.vlaanderen.

For those who are new to Mastodon and the Fediverse in general. I can recommend those resources to you:

• A guide to Mastodon by Jeroen Baert
• fedi.tips

This mastodon instance is run by individuals just like you. Those are

• 
  
  Johan Silkens (Administrator/Moderator)
  
  
• 
  
  Jessica (Administrator/Moderator)
  
  
• 
  
  Gert Jan (Administrator/Moderator)
  
  
• 
  
  Bart (Administrator/Moderator)
  
  

(Financial) contributions

It's possible to contribute (financially) to this instance. This can be done by a (recurring) donation and/or becoming a moderator.

Becoming a moderator

You can discuss this with the admin @admin@mastodon.vlaanderen or by sending an e-mail to hello[at]mastodon.vlaanderen

Donations

This server runs entirely on donations. We do not serve targeted ads and we do not sell your data as you can read in our Privacy Policy.

There are several ways you can do a (recurring) donation.

• Via PayPal
• Via a bank transfer: BE11 7351 3917 1948 with "Mastodon Vlaanderen" as the description
• Via OpenCollective. A similar platform to Patreon but with the choice that you can freely choose the amount you want to donate. Recurring or not.

Recurring donations are preferred over one-time donations, because hosting this platform is also a recurring cost.

Code of Conduct

We expect all users that are using our instance to adhere to our rules and Code of Conduct and agree to our Terms Of Service listed below. Those guidelines are not a legal document, but they are here to provide you with an insight into our content and moderation policies. The final interpretation/decision is up to the administrators of mastodon.vlaanderen.

Guidelines for other Fediverse instances

All users that interact with our instance from another instance must also follow an "common sense" practice and the admin(s) and moderators must have a good and active moderation policy. We will limit or block an entire instance if they do not have such policies in place, hosting illegal and/or abusive material, ... etc. You can find which instances we block/limit on our about page.

If you are an instance admin and believe we unjustly block/limit your instance. Send an e-mail to hello[at]mastodon.vlaanderen.

Terms of Service

Usage by (commercial) entities

Entities commercial or not are allowed on this instance. Although we recommend setting up your own instance for a variety of reasons. Setting up a Mastodon instance is not that hard nowadays since the existence of services that serves you managed Mastodon instances and do the maintenance for you. They have also better uptime guarantees and SLA (Service Level Agreement) than the average Mastodon instance that are mostly run by individuals just like this one. Which is important if your brand (heavily) relies on social media.

If you want more information about this matter. Consult the @admin or send an e-mail. We can help you out finding a good instance for you.

If you still want to join this instance, there are some guidelines/rules you must follow. To make validation easier.

• You must have an Belgian VAT number on your website and/or being based in Belgium
• Signup with your brand's e-mail domain like social@yourbrand.be and not with a public e-mail service like Gmail.

Usage by famous/well-known/public people

Well-known people are allowed to use this instance. But keep in mind that we can ask you to verify yourself if we suspect that the signed up account was made by an impersonator without a clear view that it is a parody account.

We can ask you to provide one of these for the verification process:

• 
  
  a government issued ID
  
  
• 
  
  a driver's license.
  
  

The verification process is done by e-mail. You will receive one form hello[at]mastodon.vlaanderen and a DM from one of the admin's that you should have received an e-mail from us. The e-mails will be permanently deleted for safety reasons when the verification process is complete.

Just like for (commercial) entities, we recommend you to host your own instance so that people can instantly verify that you are really the one that you claim to be. Which is not always guaranteed on a random instance.

Usage by bots

Bots are allowed on this instance under circumstances:

• 
  
  Excessive posting with public visibility are forbidden. This may annoy other users who want to discover stuff in the local timeline
  
  
• 
  
  The maintainer of the bot must be displayed in the bot's bio
  
  
• 
  
  When using data from 3rd party sources. Make sure you have permission to use it.
  
  
• 
  
  Follow the rules defined by this instance as well as abide by the ToS and CoC
  
  

Termination of the service

The admins of mastodon.vlaanderen have the right to suspend any account if they believe that the suspended account was not following the rules defined by this server. Or did not abide by the terms of service. The suspended account have 30 days to download their data to be used to move to another instance if they wish. Some data may be retained so that the user cannot evade suspension. The user has the right to appeal their suspension once. Like we stated above, the admins have the right about the final fate of the suspended account without any discussion.

The account can also be (temporary) freezed and/or we can block the access to our services if we believe the user was doing stuff that degrades the performance of the service and/or was involved in illegal activities.

Quality of the service

Like we said earlier we try to give the users the best experience Mastodon (and the Fediverse in general) can have. The servers are monitored and back-upped regularly. But as with any service, some downtime can occur. When that happens we will try our best to do get it back up online within a "reasonable" time.

Since this Mastodon instance is run by individuals and not as a commercial service with SLA's and similar stuff. Don't expect from us that we fix stuff in the middle of the night or during business hours with a tight deadline. Because we all have a paid job and other obligations besides running and maintaining this instance.

You can check our status page for that. Keep it as an bookmark in your browser as we will put our updates on that platform as well.

Cross-posting from other sources (such as Twitter)

Cross-posting is copying of posts from one platform to another via automatic ways. It is allowed but under the following circumstances:

• The account being cross-posted is owned by the same person or entity. Third-party copying is not permitted
• The (Mastodon) account is at least partially monitored by the author, so that interactions from Mastodon users are not ignored.

(very) Brief server infrastructure information

• The servers that runs the Mastodon software as well as the underlying database & media are sponsored & hosted in Belgium by Barnes & Morgan BV.
• Our e-mails are managed and stored by a Belgian mail provider MailFence

The servers are backed-up at least on a daily basis.

1. Be friendly and keep it civilized
2. This server is no place for hate speech, racism,fascism, and other forms of abusive behavior.
3. No things that infringes Belgian law such as child pornography or EU law by extent
4. Server admin(s) can change these rules at any time if needed. These will be communicated in the announcements
5. No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
6. No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users
7. Do not intentionally share misleading information
8. Organizations and companies must use their organization/company e-mail address when signing up. Although we reccomend that they set-up their own instance or using an managed hosted Mastodon platform (see ToS)
9. No spam or trolling
10. Do not try to inpersonate other users or brands. Unless it's a parody. But keep it civilized.
11. Use content warnings (CW) where needed such as spoilers and 'sensitive' posts that may trigger other people.
12. No NSFW content
13. Please consult the @admin if you want to use a bot account on this instance.
14. Posting excessive amount of ads or self promotion is disallowed

1. a.sc: suspended
2. activitypub-troll.cf: suspended
3. bae.st: suspended
4. bar***.*et: suspended
5. beta.birdsite.live: suspended
6. beta.mstdn.cf: suspended
7. bird.makeup: suspended
8. birdsite.platypush.tech: suspended
9. birdsite.slashdev.space: suspended
10. birdsite.thorlaksson.com: suspended
11. bitcoinhackers.org: suspended
12. brands.town: suspended
13. bridge.birb.space: suspended
14. brighteon.social: suspended
15. catgirl.life: suspended
16. cawfee.club: suspended
17. chud****.lol: suspended
18. fans.sonichu.com: suspended
19. fed.celp.de: limited
20. fedi.syspxl.xyz: suspended
21. freeatlantis.com: suspended
22. freecu*********t.com: suspended
23. freespeechextremist.com: suspended
24. ga*.*i: suspended
25. gab.com: suspended
26. hell*.*****.xin: limited
27. helladoge.com: suspended
28. hellsite.site: suspended
29. kiwifarms.net: suspended
30. lemmygrad.ml: limited
31. lol****.*op: suspended
32. loli***.****ork: suspended
33. makemysarcophagus.com: suspended
34. masthead.social: suspended
35. mastinator.com: suspended
36. masto1.iana.be: suspended
37. mastodon.cloud: suspended
38. mastodong.lol: suspended
39. mirr0r.city: suspended
40. misskey-forkbomb.cf: suspended
41. mstdn.jp: suspended
42. pawoo.net: limited
43. pee*****.se: suspended
44. piazza.today: suspended
45. poa.st: suspended
46. raplst.town: suspended
47. repl.co: suspended
48. respublica.eu: suspended
49. respublicae.eu: suspended
50. shitposter.club: suspended
51. social.076.ne.jp: suspended
52. social.quodverum.com: suspended
53. the.usualsuspects.lol: suspended
54. twitter.activitypub.actor: suspended
55. twtr.plus: suspended
56. twtr.vrij.social: suspended
57. xscape.top: suspended
58. zhub.link: suspended

1. mytter.jp: suspension