Mastodon server policy

All Mastodon servers commit to a policy and a list of rules which usually differ from server to server. It's important to check the policy and rules of your Mastodon server before you start automating or posting content, so you can avoid getting your account restricted or banned.

You can find the list of rules together with the email of your admin's server, on the About page of your Mastodon server. It is important to read the rules thoroughly in order to understand what is allowed in this server/community.

If you are new to Mastodon, we recommend checking out our blog article here to help you get started with Mastodon.

Finding my Mastodon server rules and policy

Go to the Home page of your Mastodon account/server
Click on the About link, located at the bottom left corner, or go to "server.name/about" (i.e. https://mastodon.social/about)





You will see the email of the server's admin, followed by the About section and the Server rules.
Firstly, make sure to check out the About section for any unique guidelines.

For example, in the https://hachyderm.io server there is a unique policy for bot accounts. Bots and accounts that automate posts are allowed with restrictions.





For hachyderm.io you can only automate up to 5 posts per day, and you are required to add a hashtag to each post.



In this case, you can use a Default Signature in Publer, containing the specific hashtag. This will automatically add that hashtag to each post.

Warning: In other servers, these rules might look different, which is why it is important to read the About section for your server thoroughly, before you start posting.


Finally, open the Server rules section to find the community/server guidelines. Make sure to read the list of rules thoroughly, as they are usually different for each sever.





If you face any other issues with your account, such as a temporary restriction or ban, please make sure to contact the Admin server. The email of the Admin is listed at the top of the About page, as shown above. For more info, read the description in the About section for your server.

Workaround

Considering that this server has a limit of 5 automated posts per day and a hashtag required, you can use some of Publer's features to automate a work-around for when you are posting to this Mastodon Server.

To ensure that the daily post limit for this server is not surpassed, you can set up a posting schedule with Publer, and create exactly 5 time-slots per day, at different times.
To automate the hashtag, so that it gets added automatically to each post you create for this server, make sure to set up a default signature. The content of the signature should be the required hashtag, i.e. #hachybots
Then, when are you are creating the posts for this server, you can auto-schedule them. Publer will add the posts to the queue and time-slots created accordingly.
When the posts are shared, they will contain the specific hashtag, i.e. hachybots.

Updated on: 12/10/2023