Terms of Service

In Short

  • It's a standard hosting contract: you pay us and we do our best to keep it online & well.
  • Community management and moderation are entirely your responsability, and we expect you to do it. The last thing the fediverse needs is one more unsupervised free-speech zone.
  • Fedi.monster has minimal rules that must be applied to all hosted instances to guarantee our legal and ethical integrity.
  • Your data stays yours and transferable in any event; we won't try to lock you in.

Extra Verbose Version

1. DEFINITIONS:

  • Mastodon: the Mastodon project, not affiliated with Fedi.monster (the Provider) or especially supporting this activity.
  • Provider: this here website and legal entity, providing hosting services to its clients.
  • Instance: an installation of Mastodon or another software as chosen, running on the Provider's infrastructure.
  • Instance Data: all recorded data of an Instance, at rest: its database, media files, and keys. This part can be transfered between infrastructures.
  • Administrators (Admins): the legal entity responsible of an Instance, and in charge of administrative duties.
    We consider here Moderators to be the same group or their subordinates.
  • Service: The service provided by Fedi.monster, depending on the chosen plan and settings.
  • Client: legal entity to whom the Service is provided, and the account holder on this website. Clients are considered Admins of their own hosted Instance.
  • Moderation: the act of enforcing appliable rules on reported content, by Moderators or Administrators.

2. CLIENT RESPONSABILITIES:

2.1. Account and Instance Security

Clients are required to keep their account information confidential and secure, as well as any sensitive data available from their restricted access account page. (Database backups, access codes, ...) Fedi.monster cannot be held responsible if any of those is stored in an insecure way or shared by the Client.

2.2. Instance Moderation

Fedi.monster will not interfere with Instance Moderation unless exceptionally prompted by the Client.
Fedi.monster has a set of common minimal rules for instances hosted using its service that must be enforced by the Admin; Instances can have any additional rules and enforce them at the Admin's discretion, but the minimal list must be enforced at all time.
Instances admins must process incoming reports (using the dedicated feature, emails and statuses mentioning them) and act accordingly under 7 days if the offense is covered by the minimal rules.

Minimal Rules for Hosted Instances:
  • no hate speech or violent discrimination, including but not limited to: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism.
  • no harassment, spamming, and other repeated or organized unwanted interactions, especially against remote instances.
    This rule exists solely to guarantee a minimal cooperation inside the federation, as Fedi.monster cannot endorse attacking other instances or entities.
  • no content illegal under French or European law.
2.3. Payment

The Client is required to pay the required amount for the provided Service when billed; Failure to pay in time may result in the Service not being provided anymore. Fedi.monster may then choose to shut down the Instance or keep it online at its discretion.
The administrator can request it shut down at any time, and all Instance data will be available for at least 7 days after shutting down the instance.

2.4. Data Ownership & Access

The Provider is allowed by the Client to manage the Instance's database and media files to maintain the Service's technical integrity and performances (under the limits fixed in 3.4), and to use the Instance's database and media files in any way made possible by the hosted softwares. The Provider cannot be held responsible for unexpected use or a vulnerability in the hosted software (Mastodon or its derivatives).
The Client will remain sole owner of the Instance's data and userbase.

3. PROVIDER RESPONSABILITIES:

3.1. End of Contract & Resiliation

The Provider is allowed to end the contract at any time. Unless breach of contract occurs, a notice will have to be emitted at least 30 days before and a partial refund may be done. The Client is allowed to cancel the Service and end this contract at any time, applicable at the end of the billed period.
In both cases, the Provider will make available complete backups of the Instance Data for at least 7 days, if possible, and at no additional cost for the Client.

3.3. Security

The Provider cannot be held liable of any security breach in hosted softwares (Mastodon, ...) or any action attributed to the Client. In case of emergency and only if required by law, the Provider can block access to content or delete content without consulting the Client beforehand.

3.4. Privacy & Data Protection

The Instance's content is confidential; The Provider will not disclose any of the Instance's content to a third party unless it is made possible by the Instance's softwares (or part of the provided Service), or demanded by the Client. The Provider may process, copy, and modify the Instance Data as required to provide and maintain the Service (updates, backups, migrations, ...) and as demanded by the Client.