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1. Embed this notice
   Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 08:29:52 JST Eugen Rochko

   • かき@GNUsocialJP

   There is a new setting for server operators in #Mastodon 4.4, under Administration -> Server Settings -> Discovery, called "Allow external sites to see your Mastodon server as a traffic source". If you're running a server for a larger group of people there is no privacy downside to enabling this, and it will help make the fediverse more visible as a traffic source to the rest of the web.

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 08:50:47 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Ric

     @dev_ric By default, Mastodon tells the browser not to send a referrer header when users navigate away to other websites. This allows the server's hostname to be sent.

   • Embed this notice
     Ric (dev_ric@fosstodon.org)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 08:50:48 JST Ric

     in reply to

     @Gargron I'm not a Mastodon server admin, but I'm curious what this actually does?

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 08:56:51 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Mike Johnston

     @ThaMunsta Some website owners may see e.g. nervesocket.com in their traffic logs and if they check it out it may identify you if you're its only user. If you don't mind this, there is no downside.

   • Embed this notice
     Mike Johnston (thamunsta@mastodon.nervesocket.com)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 08:56:52 JST Mike Johnston

     in reply to

     @Gargron is there any downside to a small or single user instance to do this? Or is it more like no, but no advantage either...

   • Embed this notice
     onnob (onnob@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 13:32:46 JST onnob

     in reply to

     @Gargron Will this enable analysts to group all Mastodon domains together as ’Mastodon’ traffic source, or as social network ‘Mastodon’? Or will every server still show up as its own unique traffic source?

     At work we are looking at ways to make Mastodon visible, but its distributed nature makes that hard right now.

   • Embed this notice
     Moritz (preya@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 09-Jul-2025 16:21:05 JST Moritz

     in reply to

     @Gargron Has it been enabled for mastodon.social yet?

   • Embed this notice
     Timo Tijhof (krinkle@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 10-Jul-2025 02:22:26 JST Timo Tijhof

     in reply to

     @Gargron

     When will the native apps adopt this? Unlike web apps, Android apps can set their own referer when opening links.

     For example, the official app could attribute its navigations to a fixed referer like mastodon.social or joinmastodon.org/apps regardless of which instance the user is logged into.

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 10-Jul-2025 02:22:26 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Timo Tijhof

     @krinkle Our apps do this, for example Mastodon for Android sends org.joinmastodon.android as the referrer.

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 12-Jul-2025 01:09:43 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Critical Silence

     @CriticalSilence See other responses in the thread.

   • Embed this notice
     Critical Silence (criticalsilence@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Saturday, 12-Jul-2025 01:09:45 JST Critical Silence

     in reply to

     Hi @gargron this is really concerning me. Feels like, this is a start of enabling content creators to make business here and Mastodon can be misused for commercial purposes by websites.
     I'm irritated, that we get a flood of toots, that advertise and suggest to enable this feature, without technical reference. Searching for it, does not really lead to an Blog or specification with technical background, I only find https://www.fediscovery.org/ but here we have server-to-server communication, right?
     "to see your Mastodon server as a traffic source" to me could be multiple things:
     URLs are passed through Mastodon instances; users lose control
     or
     personal web browsers do magic; users must disable this on their own
     or
     URLs are transformed when being published, users have workarounds by copy'n'paste