Mastodon for Users and Moderators

• 1: Mastodon's UI and Features for Moderators
• 1.1: Mastodon Report Feature
• 2: Mastodon's UI and Features for Users
• 2.1: Content Warnings
• 2.2: Mastodon User Profile and Preferences
• 2.3: How to Verify with Mastodon

1 - Mastodon's UI and Features for Moderators

The documentation in this section is meant to supplement, not supplant, Mastodon’s documentation at docs.joinmastodon.org. This section of the documentation is specifically for the Mastodon UI and features that are used by the moderation team here at Hachyderm.

1.1 - Mastodon Report Feature

Overvew

• About the Report Feature
• How to create a report
• What a Filed Report Looks Like
  • Who can see moderation reports
  • Limitations of the Mastodon Admin Interface
  • One Last Reminder

About the Report Feature

Mastodon’s report feature is a way for Mastodon users to send reports to a Mastodon instance’s admins or moderators. If you are reporting a user to your own instance’s moderators, then only they will see the report. If you are reporting a user on a remote server, then your home instance’s admins still see the report. In the case of a remote user, you can also choose whether or not to forward the report to that instance’s admins. The nuance here is capturing whether you are reporting a user to their own home instance for their admins to take action, to your own instance admins for them to take action, or both.

On Hachyderm, we specifically request Hachydermians to use the report feature for the following scenarios:

• Reporting individual posts but not the user overall
• Reporting a user via their posts
• Reporting a domain via the posts of a user on that domain

When submitting a report, it is important to include all relevant information. This includes supporting information, even if it seems obvious, any relevant posts as needed, as well as comments supplied by you.

Please note: if we receive an empty report and cannot see a clear cause, we will close the report without moderator action.

For more information about this, please see our doc on Reporting Issues and Communicating with Moderators.

How to create a report

1. Click on the meatballs(⋯) menu below the post and select “report”
   
2. Select why you’re reporting.
   
3. If you selected Server Rules for the reason, as we did in this example, then you’ll be asked to select which and can select more than one:
   
4. Please select any and all additional posts to include in the report
   
5. Please include all relevant context to help us process the report:
   
6. You can optionally choose to unfollow, mute, or block the user before you click “Done”.
   

The Additional Comments step is very important. To help us process reports efficiently there should always be additional context in the Additional Comments field - the more the better. This should be done even if the report seems self-explanatory. In the case of reports of posts, users, and domains that are in languages other than English, we will need an English translation supplied.

The most important limitation you should know at this stage is that the Additional Comments field has a character limit of 1000 characters (as of this writing). If you need to supply more context, or the translation takes more than 1000 characters, please:

• File the report with what you can
• Make sure to leave enough space to tell us there is a supplementary email
• Email us at admin@hachyderm.io

What a Filed Report Looks Like

For an example, I had Björn’s user create a report against my Blob Fox Appreciation Post that I used for the screenshots above. When a member of the moderation team reviews the report, it looks like this:

Since that is a very zoomed out view, let’s look at each of the sections. At the top is the same user information you’d see if you navigated to the top of a user’s profile page:

This section also shows the moderator team why the report was filed, in this case the “Don’t Be A Dick” rule is selected.

Underneath that is the comment that the user supplied when they filed the report as well as all the posts they selected to include with it. If the user is a Hachydermian, the user name is supplied as you can see here. If the user is off our server, only the source server is supplied.

At the bottom is the section where moderators can leave comments and choose what action to take:

Moderators can choose to close the issue with only an explaining comment, or to take one of the shown actions and close the issue. For visibility, the moderation actions are:

1. Mark as Resolved (No moderator action)
2. Delete posts (Moderator resolves by deleting the offending post(s))
3. Limit (Formerly known as “silence”. The user can still participate but they will not show in Local or Federated feeds.)
4. Freeze (User can log into their account but cannot interact.)
5. Warn (Moderators send a note through the interface to the reported user. Note this option is not visible on the screenshot.)
6. Suspend (Also known as “ban”. If the user is a Hachydermian then their account is removed from our server. If they are on a different server that user is banned from interacting with our server.)

Of the above actions, the only moderation actions that are visible are if a moderator deletes a post or suspends an account. When an issue is closed without action or when a user is warned, frozen, or limited, the action is not visible to the reporting user or other users. This means that we / your instance moderators may have taken action as the result of your report, but that action is not publicly visible.

Please look at our Actions and Appeals doc for more information about how we use the moderation tools to moderate Hachyderm.

Who can see moderation reports

If you are reporting a user on the same instance as you are (local user):

• The instance moderators can see your report

If you are reporting a user not on the same instance as you are (remote user):

• Your instance moderators can see your report
• Remote instance moderators / the moderators for the reported user’s instance can only see the report if you forward the report.

Regular users do not have access to moderation reports.

Limitations of the Mastodon Admin Interface

When we receive a report in the admin tools, there are two main drawbacks:

• We cannot follow up with the reporting user to ask for additional information
• We cannot follow up with the reported user, even if they file an appeal

How this impacts you:

• If you are reporting an issue and do not include enough information and/or a way for us to get in touch with you to clarify, we might not be able to take the appropriate action.
• If you are appealing a moderation decision and do not include enough information for us to make a decision and a way to contact you, we might not have enough information to reverse the decision and no way to request more information from you.

One Last Reminder

If we receive an empty report and cannot see a clear cause, we will close the report without moderator action.

2 - Mastodon's UI and Features for Users

The documentation in this section is meant to supplement, not supplant, Mastodon’s documentation at docs.joinmastodon.org. This section of the documentation is specifically for the Mastodon UI and features that are used by our general, non-moderator, users.

2.1 - Content Warnings

What are content warnings?

Content warnings are a feature that allows you to obscure your content in such a way that it is hidden by default in other users’ timelines. Instead, only the text of the content warning is displayed. To put it another way, if you were to put a content warning on one of your posts that read “descriptions of war violence” while discussing current or past wars, users would only see that description and could then choose to click through the content warning to view the content (or not).

How to apply a content warning

In order to apply a content warning use the “CW” in the post field:

An example post with a content warning on the text and image looks like this:

Threads with a content warning

Whenever someone replies to a post with a content warning, by default their response will carry the same content warning. Here is an example:

This is the default due to the nature of the content warning: if the top-most post of a thread needs a content warning due to what’s being shown or discussed, then the rest of that thread probably needs the same content warning. This is true both for when you respond to your own posts or when other users respond to your posts.

When you reply to a post with a content warning you can manually disable and delete the content warning, but please do so with care. When you remove the content warning from your post all replies to you will also no longer be behind a content warning by default, even if they should be.

When are content warnings used

Content warnings are generally used to either hide spoilers or to provide a buffer when it is psychologically safer to choose to opt in to a conversation as opposed to being opted in by default (seeing it in a timeline). For more information on the nuance for how and when to use content warnings, please take a look at our doc on how to use content warnings.

2.2 - Mastodon User Profile and Preferences

Overview

This documentation page covers the customization options available to you via Profile and Preferences settings. The majority of the article length is due to screenshots that show the main view for each settings page. All of the settings shown in the screenshots are the default settings, done for the purposes of this article. This document only provides explanation text where the feature being enabled / disabled is not self-descriptive.

• Profile Settings
  • Appearance
  • Featured Hashtags
• Preferences Settings
  • Appearance
  • Notifications
  • Other

Profile Settings

In order to edit your profile settings, you can click the “Edit Profile” text beneath your handle on the left side, like so:

Alternatively you can go to the settings/profile endpoint directly in your browser.

Appearance

When you go to settings/profile, by default you will be taken to the settings for Profile Appearance:

To recap the above, here is where you can:

• Set your display name
• Write your bio
• Upload your header and avatar images
• Enable or disable follow requests
  
  • Disabled by default. Accounts will be able to follow your account without explicit approval.
    When enabled, you will be prompted to approve or deny follow requests.
• Set if you’re a bot
  
  • Disabled by default. When enabled, your account displays with the word “bot” next to your handle and display handle on your profile. There are no other changes to your account.
• Suggest your account to others
  
  • Disabled by default. When enabled, your account will be recommended to other accounts as an account to follow.
• Hide your social graph
  
  • Disabled by default. When enabled, other users will not be able to see who you follow or who follows you.
• Write your profile metadata
  • This allows you to input information that is rendered like “key: value” tags.
    Relevantly, when you add URLs these are also where the text area highlights green when verified.
• Migrate to a different account or link to an account you’re migrating from
• Delete your account
  
  • ⚠️ Account deletion works differently than account suspension. When you delete your account your data is deleted immediately and not after a 30 day window. Also, there are inconsistent reports when deleted accounts are resurrected as they may not federate correctly depending on how servers remote to that account update their information about the account no longer being deleted (or not).

Featured Hashtags

Featured hashtags are your ability to direct which hashtags appear on your main view. They are configured by the Featured Hashtags settings located on the nav menu underneath Profile Appearance. This page can also be accessed directly via settings/featured_tags.

When you enter hashtags to feature on your main view, they appear in the lower right:

Note in this case the descriptive text “Hachyderm’s Featured Hashtags” refers to Hachyderm as the account display handle and not Hachyderm at the instance-level.

Preferences Settings

The Preferences settings are located immediately under the Profile settings in the left navigation menu.

Appearance

When selected, the Appearance settings (not to be confused with the above) display by default. This page can also be accessed via settings/preferences/appearance.

To recap the above, here is where you can:

• Set your interface language
• Set your site theme (light or dark)
• Enable the advanced web interface
  • Disabled by default. This allows you to pin and view multiple columns. Please see the Mastodon documentation about user preferences for more detail.
• Enable Slow mode
  • This stops the timeline view from refreshing automatically.
• Enable Auto-play animated GIFs
• Set to reduce motion in animations
  
  • This is specific to reducing the motion of animated GIFs.
• Disable swiping motions
  • This is specific to using browsers with devices that have a swiping feature. When enabled, it stops you from accidentally switching timelines when using a swipe motion to “go back”.
• Use the system font
  • When enabled, this uses Mastodon’s default font (Roboto).
• Enable crop image size
• Show trends
• Enable the confirmation before following someone
• Enable the confirmation before boosting
• Enable the confirmation before deleting a post
• Set how you want media to display
  • Default is “hide media marked as sensitive”. Specifically allows you to either always show media, always hide media, or hide media only where the poster marked that media as sensitive.
• Enable if you want a color gradient for hidden media
• Enable if you want posts expanded with content warnings

Notifications

Accessible via Preferences Notifications. Can also be directly accessed via settings/preferences/notifications. These preferences are separate from the Notifications preferences you can make when viewing in the Timeline view.

To recap the above, here is where you can:

• Enable or disable email notifications for:
  • Someone following you
  • Someone requesting to follow you
  • Someone boosting you
  • Someone favoriting a post
  • Someone mentioning you
• Override the above, in cases where:
  • The account is not following you
  • You are not following the account
• Block direct messages from people you don’t follow

For the two features in the “override” section above, this means if you have enabled notifications for boosts and also enabled “block notifications from non-followers”, then you will only see notifications for when your followers boost you.

Other

Located at via Preferences Other or settings/preferences/other.

To recap the above, here is where you can:

• Opt-out of search engine indexing
• Group boosts in timelines
  • Enabled by default. When enabled, if multiple people have boosted the same post in a short timeframe you will only one of the boosts rather than all of the boosts separately.
• Set your default posting privacy
  • Posting privacy options are:
    Public
    Unlisted
    Private
• Set your default posting language
• Set if you want all of your media marked as sensitive
• Disclose what application you use to post from
• Filter languages
  • Note not all languages captured in screenshot, due to length.

2.3 - How to Verify with Mastodon

What is verification?

Verification on Mastodon works less like Twitter and more like an identity service. That is, you do not need to prove your association with your own brand to an entity or to pay a fee, you are only showing that you are the owner of one (or more) domains or accounts on separate services to substantiate your digital identity.

Here’s what it looks like when a profile has verified via their GitHub identity:

GitHub shows as verified with a green checkmark and complete URL, including username / handle.

What domains or accounts can you verify?

You can verify via:

• Any domain that you can edit pages for
• Any online service that recognizes, supplies, or allows you to supply the “rel me” attribute (see below).

How to verify

Verifying with domains

In general, when you verify you will do so by using the following HTML on the page you are editing, like a personal site or blog:

<a rel="me" href="https://hachyderm.io/@username">Hachyderm</a>

If you would like to avoid using a visible link, like the above, you can also put the following in the page headers:

<link rel="me" href="https://hachyderm.io/@username">

After doing either of the above, you will need to add the URL of the site to your Hachyderm / Mastodon profile. You will do that by:

1. Go to Edit Profile
2. In one of the four fields of Profile Metadata, add the URL of the destination you are verifying
3. Save changes

Here is an example profile with two separate sources of identity verification:

Screenshot of Hachyderm user profile taken with permission.

Verifying with services

We will add more services as requested by the Community either by creating an issue on our Community Issue Tracker or via a direct pull request on the Community repo.

Instructions for current, commonly requested, services are below.

As with the verification process itself: when verifying with a service, that service is responsible for assisting with errors or issues with verification. If you experience issues with the verification process, please reach out to the relevant service for assistance.

GitHub

In early 2023 GitHub announced support for multiple social URLs, including adding support for Mastodon specifically. In order to verify via GitHub:

1. Go to your GitHub profile page and click “Edit”
2. Provide your Hachyderm account URL of the format https://hachyderm.io/@USERNAME
3. Click “Save”

Once you have saved, your GitHub profile should now render your Mastodon account in the format @USERNAME@hachyderm.io.

Visually

When you edit, it will look like this:

Once saved, your Hachyderm account will look like this: