More on mastodon.social's new Terms of Service:

Here's a thread on the odious "waiver" clause from @pluralistic -- https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114706885462760813

And, there's a bunch of discussion in the github issue at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/35086#issuecomment-2982642642

#mastodon

Mastodon is putting their Terms of Service updates on hold to get further advice and incorporate improvements. A good call! https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

@mcc, whose outstanding Github issue played the key role in making this happen, has an excellent summary at https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114710875472699375 A couple of key points:

"The big problem, as I see it, is that Mastodon is now opening the pandora's box of making the content licensing situation of the Fediverse explicit, which in a federated environment will be very hard to do without crushing someone's toes, somewhere.....

What we need, for this to work out better next time, is actual community engagement in the TOS process.... Again, I think Mastodon gGmbH is showing good faith in how they're engaging with the community now, so we'll see what happens."

Yeah really. There's certainly an opportunity here for Mastodon to look at its engagement strategies in general, and build on the work @andypiper and @renchap have already been doing.

And there's certainly a lot of interesting thinking happening here. For example, @neil has a draft for a template Terms of Service, and @sarahjamielewis has a short thread on the complexities of licensing in a federated world. All of this is relevant to fedi as a whole, not just Mastodon!

#mastodon #fediverse