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ETA: GOOD NEWS!
https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821
In reading an important discussion of the IP assignment in the new Mastodon.social ToS:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/35086
I was GOBSMACKED to discover the new ToS has a "binding arbitration waiver," which takes away your right to sue, no matter how badly the service abuses you.
These are profoundly unethical, terrible clauses. They should never, ever appear in "adhesion contracts" (that is, contracts that you merely click through, rather than negotiating.)
No one, and I do mean NO ONE, should ever, ever, EVER agree to a binding arbitration waiver.
These are the most grotesquely unfair contractual terms in routine use today. The potential for abuse is literally unlimited.
Remember when a Disney World visitor died of an allergic reaction after being assured that her food order was allergen-free? Disney argued that her family couldn't sue because her husband had clicked through an arbitration waiver when signing up for a free trial of Disney Plus.
I am very shocked to see this in the ToS for the flagship Mastodon instance, promulgated by the Mastodon nonprofit.
To be clear, I think this is *much* worse than, say, requiring users of mastodon.social to agree to have their posts used to train LLMs. The harms of having your work fed to an AI are mostly hypothetical and relate to moral qualms.
By contrast, a binding arbitration waiver would literally allow the management of mastodon.social to cause your DEATH and face no consequences.
I am trying not to be dramatic here, but this is a deal-breaker for me - literally. I changed dentists because I wouldn't sign binding arbitration. I changed solar installers because I wouldn't sign binding arbitration.
I could never, in good conscience, recommend that someone use a service that required binding arbitration as a condition of use - which means that as of July 1, I would no longer be able to recommend that people get an account on mastodon.social.
And since mastodon.social is the flagship instance, which sets the moral example - and the workaday template - for most instances in the Fediverse, this catastrophically bad clause is likely to proliferate far and wide throughout the Fediverse, rendering most of this new, better internet unfit for use.
Please, @Gargron, reconsider this. It is a very bad look - and worse still, it's a very, very bad example.
I assume you'll be blogging about this shortly?
@funcrunch @Gargron Probably not, though nothing's impossible. I've also reached out to @mmasnick to see about getting the arbitration clause in the Bluesky ToS (which I didn't know about until just now) removed.
@pluralistic @Gargron @mmasnick
Even if they do remove it I think it would be useful to blog about why you believe binding arbitration is so dangerous, unless you already have done so recently.
Here's the "binding arbitration" tag on my blog:
I see in the Github issue that, moving forward, the new language will be the default based on its inclusion in the Mastodon #ToS templates. This isn't ideal.
If #Pleroma is better in this regard, one option would be to encourage the adoption of Pleroma and its forks. Pleroma is much lighter anyway. FWIW: I've run my own Pleroma instance for 4 years and this is being posted from it.
However, realistically, Mastodon is likely to remain a dominant force in the Fediverse. The ToS issue is therefore significant.
I have nothing against the Mastodon core group's likely desire to be bought out for $1B due in part to its creation of "birdsites" that own piles of content. But the Fediverse might well be one of the few things that is still standing between the boot and the human face in "1984".
You're a "name" that's associated with rights. If you do the following, it might gain some traction. Work with your circle to set up a light automated fork of Mastodon. The fork could also be thought of as a spoon.
The fork or spoon would be identical to upstream except for changes made by automation scripts. Such as replacement of the ToS templates with versions that your group would select. It would be a simple matter.
Forks usually die quickly. However, there's little to prevent semi-automated spoons from lasting indefinitely. Sometimes, too, forks end up with both superior features and momentum. See: angie, a full fork of nginx.
Mastodon gGmbH has trademarked the term "Mastodon" as a software mark. However, a spoon could certainly refer to itself as Mastodon (tm) compatible. If "Xnet" isn't trademarked, that term could be trademarked and used as the repo name. Or perhaps "Little Brother" would work.
One nice thing about the spoon approach, aside from the fact that it might be relatively low effort, is that other people would have different concerns about Mastodon that could be addressed at the same time as the stated issue.
Creative Commons people would, for example, like to see increased promotion of Creative Commons in the default Mastodon setup.
So, you might be able to assemble a group of 5 to 10 people. That would be more than enough. Or the prospect of a spoon might offer some leverage in discussions with @Gargron.
Illustration: A #Mastodon is facing a fork by somebody who has a better known name than he does. The Mastodon reconsiders his position on intellectual property issues.
The illustration is partly LLM, though I have concerns related to LLM, and partly GIMP.
"We've heard your feedback on the Terms of Service updates for mastodon.social and mastodon.online, and we're pausing the implementation date (previously announced to users via email as 1st July 2025) so we can take further advice and make improvements."
@OldCoder @pluralistic @Gargron @mmasnick @funcrunch love to see it
https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821
Subsequent to reading the linked thread, it seems likely that the problematic changes are an ex-parrot.
