We are silencing mastodon.social and mastodon.online. All future follows from these instances will take manual approval.

We have enough mutuals on these instances to make defederating difficult. However, time and time again, these two instances comprise the overwhelming majority of moderation work done here. Moderation is at best sparse on these instances -- we have had repeated issues with spambots and unsavory users, with reports going largely unnoticed.

We are concerned about these instances becoming a gateway to harassment or spam, due to open registration and lack of proper moderation. This is beyond the actions of any singular user -- it's more of a lot of small offenses that have accumulated over time, and that make moderation work much more difficult.

If you are on these instances, it may be worthwhile to look at migrating.

• hazel