So to recap something that happened yesterday, as I see it:
Yesterday Mastodon gGmbH sent out an email to mastodon.social and .online users announcing a new TOS. The TOS would take effect July 1, and would ship in the next version of the Mastodon server software as a suggested "template" TOS instances could adopt.
This TOS had multiple problems, and several people said so loudly. This morning, Mastodon announced they're backing off and taking additional legal advice:
The problems I saw raised were:
Raised by me: The new intellectual property clause was permanent/irrevokable; Mastodon retained rights to your posts even after they were deleted.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/35086
Raised by Cory Doctorow: The new TOS forced users to give up the right to sue in court, & forced use of arbitration instead. 😬
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114706885462760813
Raised by Sarah Jamie Lewis and others: It was ambiguous if *other federated servers* counted as "users" under the TOS.
https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/114699476927561899
When they announced this, Mastodon didn't seem to realize their new terms would be controversial. They also seemed to believe there had been adequate community review time because a version of the TOS had been posted in their git repo for a year. I raise my eyebrow at both these things (didn't think arbitration would be controversial, really?)… but Mastodon *is* a nonprofit that was working with a pro-bono lawyer, and their rapid backoff once the community started engaging shows good faith.
@mcc This was an eventual outcome, because #Mastodon has never seen a problem with having their repository on #MicrosoftGithub. This demonstrates a naive view of privacy and ownership, which is percolating into the open.
