Mastodawn

We've published our new terms of service for mastodon.social and mastodon.online today, effective July 1. The same template will be available as an option to other servers in the upcoming #Mastodon 4.4 update. There are no changes to our policies or operations, just clarifications, e.g. if you upload content to be displayed to other users, you give us permission to display it to other users, but you keep all rights to it. We also explicitly prohibit scraping, even though it was never allowed.

Dallas Groot Jun 17

@Gargron I literally just read it before seeing your post on here

MOVED to: @Linux@mastodon.au Jun 17

@Gargron Privacy Policy
Last updated Oct 06, 2022

I think there should be a footer URL to your TOS. Because on your footer you only list your Privacy Policy.

MOVED to: @Linux@mastodon.au Jun 17

@Gargron

I found it manually typing in the URL, but it should be found somewhere easily on your website. It is not https://mastodon.social/terms-of-service

#Mastodon #Fediverse #TermsOfService #TOS

@Linux @Gargron

Why is there a binding arbitration clause? A lot of people aren't going to like that. I'm not a fan of arbitration myself, so I hope this doesn't spread to other instances as the default TOS agreement.

Eugen Rochko Jun 17

@Linux There is currently a bug with displaying the link in the footer before the effective date of the terms. It will be fixed as soon as possible.

@Gargron what happens when you want to delete something isn't documented in the ToS, which is causing some commotion in some circles. Can you elaborate about the withdrawal of consent?

@Gargron I got two mails from mastodon.social, 13:37 (😎) and 15:09. Why? Both are mixed German and English.

Eugen Rochko Jun 17

@timoka There was an issue with sending the e-mail more than once by accident today due to a software glitch. We're working on preventing that from occurring again.

Puncha Not See Jun 17

Eugen, a million thanks. 🙏🏽💕

Pixelcode 🇺🇦Jun 17

@Gargron The no-scraping clause sounds as if bots (like RSS-to-Mastodon relays) are banned now. Is that intentional or an oversight? (Or did I misread something?)

https://social.tchncs.de/@pixelcode/114698622339962542

Pixelcode 🇺🇦 (@pixelcode@social.tchncs.de)

@fribbledom@mastodon.social So, “any automated system to access the instance” basically bans all bots, such as RSS-to-Mastodon relays? 🧐

Mastodon

BronMason Jun 17

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

@Gargron Why is Mastodon taking the anti-consumerist approach with the arbitration clauses?

schrotthaufen Jun 17

@Gargron @blogdiva What’s with the irrevocable usage rights part then?

Alexandre Dulaunoy Jun 17

@Gargron So no more indexing, no more archiving, just dying content. You don’t even allow archive.org to crawl it?

@adulau @Gargron
"for unauthorized purposes", and clearly saying it is about training LLMs, nothing about archive.org - there could be exception then.

Ike Seblon Jun 17

@Gargron Hi! Thanks for all the work! Regarding the pre-arbitration section of our new TOA, in the passage "The Notice to the Instance shall be sent to N/A with a paper copy to N/A" who is "N/A?"

Also, can anyone briefly explain the reasoning of "perpetuity" in the data-retention clauses?

@Gargron 🥺 can the new terms of service include more characters for the toot box, pretty please 👉 🥺 👈

Thomas Svensson 🖖Jun 18

As a new member of Team @fosstodon, I'm a little curious about the clarification on scraping in this release.

In particular if it also covers doing it through the federation API. For example, Threads just improved interpretability with the Fediverse.

What prevents them for using that as a *clever* scraper to feed Meta's LLM training?

Curious Magpie Jun 19

@Gargron I am sure you've already seen the concerns re: arbitration - I think it's time for you to address and clarify. See recent thread from @pluralistic as an example.