Regarding spam: Should we make this Mastodon instance invite-only (with invites available from any existing user or from me if you email me directly)?
@jonah I would advise agains invite-only. This makes it much harder for people to join. Confirmation e-mail makes it very close to any other normal service out there.
Just my 2 cents
@croqaz that is (IIRC) what we currently do, but we still get spambots and fake accounts fairly often 🤔
@jonah I see. I guess I forgot about that since I joined.
But if you put your e-mail out there, can you control the amount of spam you'll receive, from bots trying to get invites?
Also, how could someone already in the server send invites? (is this feature in Mastodon already?)
@croqaz Yes. Go to https://social.privacytools.io/invites (or open your preferences and click "Invite people" in the sidebar).
I can tolerate receiving email spam (email is already listed at https://social.privacytools.io/about/more anyways), I just don't want spam in the timelines lol
@jonah Inviting sounds good, I had no idea.
Just one more question though: if someone doesn't know me (for example) and sees my Mastodon account and wants to ask me to join from my profile, is that possible?
Or the inviation happens offline and we exchange e-mails there?
@croqaz no. If someone wanted to join they'd have to know someone on here already. So like you could give an invite link to your friends/family if they wanted in.
If they really don't know anyone on here they would also have the option to shoot me an email which I'd list on the homepage, and then I'd send them an invite myself. Sort of the way Riseup does it but less strict.
@jonah Makes sense. Thank you 👌