Signups are not open and probably never will be. Reach out to Tom if you want to be invited.
Below is a summary of rules you need to follow if you want to have an account on this server of Mastodon:
labyrinth.social is a small Mastodon server for friends of Tom Dickinson, using the Hometown fork of Mastodon.
This about/readme document is mirrored between the labyrinth.social server and github pages. Hopefully they will always be in sync. This is the latest version as of 11/18/2022.
Let’s break that down into three different questions, increasingly granular as we go.
Mastodon is a social networking app. It’s a little like Twitter, in that you make short posts and follow/reply to other users. But it’s nothing like Twitter, in that it’s open source, decentralized, and has no ads.
If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, I get it. It’s a little hard to explain. But here are two pretty good explanations.
There are many Mastodon servers out there, all talking to one another. This is one of them.
This server uses Hometown, an alternate version of Mastodon created by Darius Kazemi. Hometown has been altered to add some additional features that aren’t in the main version of Mastodon. Yeah, you can do that! It’s one of the cool things about open source software.
The most major differences are local-only posting, and exclusive lists. See the Hometown wiki for more information on the project and how it differs from regular Mastodon.
Labyrinth.social is a deliberately small Hometown instance created by Tom Dickinson, for a few friends. Currently there are five active users. I intend to invite more people but I don’t think there will ever be more than around 25.
An informal roadmap for the future of the project is maintained here.
The name “labyrinth” was chosen because it is an interesting image/word that has a lot of different resonances, Mythology, design, architecture, puzzles, David Bowie in very tight pants, etc. My direct inspiration for using it comes from Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 short story “The Garden of Forking Paths”, which is good and you should read it.
labyrinth.social is invite only, and limited to Tom Dickinson’s friends. If you want to know more about how I’m deciding who to invite, check out the Invitation Policy. The general gist is that I am only planning on inviting a small number of people I know pretty well. If that describes you and you’re interested in joining, let me know!
That said, and you may already know this: even if you haven’t joined labyrinth.social, you can still follow me and the other labyrinth.social users. All you need is an account on any Mastodon server. Actually there are some other kinds of servers that work too, but if you’re new to all this then I recommend Mastodon.
If you’re looking for some other server to join, skip to this section in the middle of my “What is Mastodon?” post, which has some advice on how to find one to join
As of this writing, five people including Tom. Plus an admin account which is just Tom again tbh.
You can browse the Profile Directory to see the users who have opted in to appearing in it. But not everybody necessarily has!
Users are required to read, at minimum, the Code of Conduct. It is recommended that you read the other policy documents as well.
These are not just boilerplate documents, they are largely original documents written by me, so my goal is for them to be clear and readable. Although some of them do have some boilerplate language in them.
Any significant updates to any of these policies will be announced from the @admin@labyrinth.social account.
One of the most important differences between Hometown and vanilla Mastodon is the ability to use Local Only posting. In the context of Hometown, local only posting is a per-post security option that lets you set whether that post can federate out to other servers or not.
Click here to read more about local-only posting and how it works on labyrinth.social.
This instance uses Mutant Standard emoji, which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
For the moment, I have chosen to add only a small subset of these emoji, most notably the custom flags and symbols from their Gender, Sexuality, and Relationships category. Other emojis from that set (or any other source) can be added by request to the admin.
Hometown generally allows you to view content from and interact with users from any other server in the fediverse. These are the exceptions that have been made on this particular server.
Media files from these servers will not be processed or stored, and no thumbnails will be displayed, requiring manual click-through to the original file:
Server | Reason |
---|---|
mstdn.jp | lax moderation of illegal material |
Posts from these servers will be hidden in public timelines and conversations, and no notifications will be generated from their users interactions, unless you are following them:
Server | Reason |
---|---|
mstdn.jp | lax moderation of illegal material |
sinblr.com | Unttaged NSFW |
No data from these servers will be processed, stored or exchanged, making any interaction or communication with users from these servers impossible:
Server | Reason |
---|---|
13bells.com | maga shit |
aethy.com | lolicon |
bae.st | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
baraag.net | lolicon |
beefyboys.club | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
beefyboys.win | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
brighteon.social | "free speech zone" |
cachapa.xyz | transphobia |
cawfee.club | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
chudbuds.lol | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
clubcyberia.co | homophobia |
club.darknight-coffee.eu | "free speech zone" |
comfyboy.club | Discrimination, racism |
cum.salon | Discrimination |
daishouri.moe | Fascism, openly advertises with swastika |
detroitriotcity.com | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
eientei.org | racist |
elonsucks.org | who cares |
eveningzoo.club | Homophobia |
f.haeder.net | Discrimination |
freeatlantis.com | Conspiracy theory instance |
freecu*********t.com | |
freefedifollowers.ga | Follower spam |
freespeechextremist.com | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
frennet.link | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
gab.ai | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
gab.com | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
gameliberty.club | "free speech zone" |
gearlandia.haus | Discrimination |
gegenstimme.tv | "free speech zone" |
genderheretics.xyz | transphobia |
gitmo.life | "free speech zone" |
glindr.org | Discrimination |
glowers.club | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
gorf.space | maga troll instance |
handicapped.tk | racist/homophobic |
honkwerx.tech | Racism |
iddqd.social | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
itmslaves.com | "free speech zone", noagenda affiliated |
jaeger.website | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
kenfm.quadplay.tv | Conspiracy videos |
kiwifarms.cc | Come on. |
libre.tube | Promotion of violence and murder |
lolicon.rocks | Lolicon |
lolison.top | paedo |
mastinator.com | privacy violations |
mastodon.network | Imperaonation linking to porn |
mastodon.popps.org | Homophobia |
mastodon.top | Temporary - To be revisited in April 2023. |
meta-tube.de | Conspiracy, CoVid19 denier videos |
midnightride.rs | Discrimination |
mstdn.foxfam.club | mstdn.foxfam.club |
mugicha.club | discrimination |
newjack.city | Exclusive to unwanted follow bots |
nicecrew.digital | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
noagendasocial.com | "free speech zone", harassment |
ns.auction | Racism etc |
obo.sh | "free speech" |
ohai.su | Offline |
pawoo.net | Untagged nfsw content, unwanted follow bots, lolicon |
paypig.org | Racism |
pieville.net | Racism, antisemitism |
pleroma.kitsunemimi.club | Discrimination |
pleroma.narrativerry.xyz | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
pleroma.nobodyhasthe.biz | Doxxing and discrimination |
pleroma.rareome.ga | privacy policy violation |
pl.info.***********.online | Racism |
pl.nat********.*nline | Racism |
pl.serialmay.link | racist |
pl.t******.de | Transphobia |
poa.st | extremely racist |
poster.place | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
qoto.org | bad moderation policies, admin harassing other admins |
rapem***.*****ions | no! |
rdrama.cc | troll |
refusal.biz | pedophile apologia |
rojogato.com | transphobia |
ryona.agency | alt right |
seal.cafe | racist |
shitpost.cloud | troll |
shitposter.club | "Free speech zone" |
shota.house | lolicon |
sleepy.cafe | sleepy.cafe |
sneak.berlin | privacy violation |
sneed.social | racist |
social.ancreport.com | Discrimination, racism, "free speech zone" |
social.teci.world | racist |
social.********er.de | Conspiracy, CoVid19 denier |
socnet.supes.com | Right wing "free speech zone" |
solagg.com | Scammers |
sperg.city | transphobia |
spinster.xyz | Discrimination |
tastingtraffic.net | Homophobia |
toot.canberrasocial.net | "free speech zone" |
truthsocial.co.in | Alt-right trolls |
tube.kenfm.de | Conspiracy videos |
tube.querdenken-711.de | Conspiracy videos |
varishangout.net | Transphobia, aggressive trolling |
wiki-tube.de | Right wing conspiracy videos |
wintermute.fr.to | Discrimination |
yggdrasil.social | Discrimination |