Hello everyone. I am still learning about the fediverse.

I wanted to create a Mastadon account, and I see many different options for servers. I couldn’t necessarily search which servers value privacy like this community does, so I am hoping you can inform me what servers DO offer that mindset.

And finally, do you just trust that they follow this, or is there a way to verify?

It seems like, from my understanding, my information will be stored by someone else, somewhere, in hopes it’s protected.

Your information will be stored on the server you choose.

It really doesn’t matter which one you choose, just choose one. It doesn’t matter which one.

The difference is Mastodon will not store anymore information than you explicitly give it. It’s not going to mine your location data, it’s not going to ask for your contacts to add to a database and profile people. It’s not going to track your activity across the web and use your activity to serve you ads. There are no ads, so there is no incentive.

Even if your Mastodon server host WANTED to track all of your information like Meta or other centralized services do, they couldn’t afford to.

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In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more…


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We’ve tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the “official” Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other “Privacy Guides” communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don’t ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don’t repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don’t abuse our community’s willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

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