Any Stanford faculty can sign up at faculty.mastodon.stanford.edu and you can learn more about the Stanford Mastodon Pilot on the University IT website.
For more information about why Mastodon is important for academic discourse, check out the brief introductory paper: Empowering People with an Authoritative and Decentralized Social Media Platform
To learn more about the code behind mastodon.stanford.edu, check out the code repository on code.stanford.edu/uit-services/kube-mastodon. You can also view a high level architectural diagram for the Stanford instance in the attachments section below.
Background provided by Joshua Barnett on what Mastodon is, why there is interest in Stanford offering the service:
- Built out Mastodon instance specific for faculty
- Federated with other Mastodon instances
- Important for public discourse
- Can help battle fake information and create a trusted source
- Goal is to create an academic voice for a truly global town square
Q&A:
- Q: Is this open to the world?
- A: Anybody that has a Mastodon account could ingest, read and engage what Stanford faculty members are posting and sharing. Only our faculty can post.
- Q: Are there any plans to make this available to staff and students?
- A: This is built out to allow us to potentially build separate instances for other groups, if this pilot is successful and there is demand and support for expansion.
- Q: In case of harassment, who is policing this?
- A: Deeply debated in numerous groups around Stanford. Right now, we are relying on a faculty review process, entirely internal to the faculty ecosystem. A faculty system for the faculty, moderated by the faculty.
- Q: I was invited to Mastodon when Musk bought twitter, will those existing accounts be migrated to this instance? What is the plan?
- A: Mastodon has the ability to migrate accounts from one instance to another. The platform is not quite matured, yet but we are hoping this pilot helps to legitimize and help mature Mastodon. Migration in the future could be possible.
Xueshan Feng shared the technical architecture and considerations of our instance:
- You can find documentation on the implementation at code.stanford.edu - search for Mastodon
Q&A:
- Q: Are you actively recruiting faculty for this pilot.
- A: Yes, we are. Please spread the word and help us find avenues for outreach to faculty. Joshua Barnett would be the contact person or just send them to the instance (faculty.mastodon.stanford.edu) to login. Note: Only appointed professors are considered "faculty" and this is limited to that specific affiliation.
- Q: Where would faculty go to get help/support with this platform? The staff supporting faculty don’t have access to the experience, yet.
- A: We are in pilot mode right now but there is a support form on SNOW for faculty. Joshua can be a point of contact for support during the pilot. If and when this platform goes to production, we would have a much more robust support approach.
- Q: Is there a web page to help popularize that this exists?
- A: https://uit.stanford.edu/service/mastodon-faculty-pilot
