Societal.co is what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now, like the societal changes that have come about as a result of various civil rights movements Societal is catering to those looking for fresh, new, authentic voices.

• Welcome to a community where advertisers don’t call the shots.
• Where your data isn’t packaged up and sold.
• Where you – not algorithms – decide what you see.  
• Where you actually like spending time and can freely speak
• Welcome to a beautiful diverse online community of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and backgrounds that express themselves in their own personal way. 
• Welcome to a network with no borders that embraces the idea of globalism and diversity bringing together people from all around the world.
• Welcome to social media the way it should be.  
• Welcome to Societal, Social networking back in your hands.

Follow friends and discover new ones. Publish anything you want: links, pictures, text, video. All on an ethical sustainable platform that is community-owned and ad-free.

So, let’s start with the basics.

What is Societal?

Societal.co is an unbiased social media network focused on real user experiences and engagement and is part of a federated network.  That simply means there is no one single entity that is in complete control.

 It is one of the hundreds of servers that hosts a microblogging software called 'mastodon' similar to Twitter, but instead of being centralized it is a 'federated network' that operates in a similar way to email. That said, the idea behind the social network isn’t necessarily to kill Twitter. It’s to hand control of data back to the user and create a platform that will remain forever.

The basic idea is you join one instance/server like 'Societal.co' and you can subscribe to people on this instance/server (Societal.co) and to other people on other instances/servers across the network. This develops into a large network of different communities all linked together into a huge distributed network of social connections which gives you a lot of freedom over your data.

Who owns the network?

There are lots of servers hosting this microblogging software around the world. Societal is hosted by a group of individuals committed to building a beautiful diverse online community of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and backgrounds that express themselves in their own personal way through Societal. They are super friendly and are presently running the server out of their own pockets.

Like email when you sign up you know you’ll be able to communicate with people on other servers around the Fediverse so long as you know their address. This means there’s no big uncaring company running it all, no shareholders, no central control, none of the targeted advertising we’re all fed up with, just a bunch of people sharing the things they want to share with each other.

What is the Fediverse?

The Fediverse (often referred to as the "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that host the microblogging software, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other.

What is an instance?

The word “instance” is often used as a synonym of a server. So Societal is a Mastodon instance.

Where do I sign up?

The first thing you have to do is sign up at Societal.co. This is an extra step compared to sites like Twitter or Tumblr, but isn’t as difficult as it may seem. Like with email, your identity is hosted by Societal.co. So for example, if someone wanted to mention you who was from another server they can type @Username@Societal.co in their post. You have the ability to view all public local posts that have been made by people on your server in the so-called “local timeline”.

What are toots?

Posts on Societal.co are called “toots”, because that’s the sound an elephant makes. Take a moment to check out the rules of Societal.co and make sure they are compatible with how you want to be tooting.

What are content warnings?

One of the best features on Societal.co is that button that says “CW” where you write your toots. Clicking that adds a content warning field where you can put information about what the toot contains (eg. mental health, politics, lewd talk, nudity) so that people don’t have to see content they wish to avoid, for whatever reason. Of course, it’s also great for show or book spoilers.

A common convention is to put +, -, or ~ in a content warning to signify if the contents are broadly positive, negative, or mixed respectively.

My advice is simple: if you’re not sure whether a toot needs a CW or not, give it a CW. People really appreciate it and it doesn’t do any harm to be too cautious and too respectful of others.

You can also use a CW to summarise a long post. Some use it for joke punchlines. Maybe you’ll think of other uses for it. Have fun.

Community Guidelines

The following guidelines are not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the administration of Societal; they are here to provide you with an insight into our content moderation policies:

1. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline:

    * Excessive advertising
    * Uncurated news bots posting from third-party news sources
    * Untagged nudity, pornography, and sexually explicit content, including artistic depictions
    * Untagged gore and extremely graphic violence, including artistic depictions
2. The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline, and may result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:
    * Racism or advocation of racism
    * Sexism or advocation of sexism
    * Casteism or advocation of casteism
    * Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, or advocation thereof
    * Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism
3. The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service:
    * Sexual depictions of children
    * Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism

4. Any conduct intended to stalk or harass other users, or to impede other users from utilizing the service, or to degrade the performance of the service, or to harass other users, or to incite other users to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed, and subject to punishment up to and including revocation of access to the service. This includes, but is not limited to, the following behaviors:

• Continuing to engage in conversation with a user that has specifically has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed.
• Aggregating, posting, and/or disseminating a person's demographic, personal, or private data without express permission (informally called doxing or dropping dox) may be considered harassment.
• Inciting users to engage another user in continued interaction or discussion after a user has requested for said engagement with that user to cease and desist (informally called brigading or dogpiling) may be considered harassment.

These provisions notwithstanding, the administration of the service reserves the right to revoke any user's access permissions, at any time, for any reason, except as limited by law.

What is the community motto?

'The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.' Therefore, even though users can interact across instances, Societal has blocked content from some servers with policies or content contrary to our community guidelines and motto.

What is the web interface?

The standard interface has multiple columns rather than a single feed. You can move or remove these at your leisure.

Home is all the toots in chronological order of the people you’re following. It includes the toots of people on your server and on other servers, all that matters is that it’s people you follow. Some people like to disable boosts in this column so they just see what their follows themselves say. That option is there if you click the settings button on the top right of the column.

“Boost” (as in “signal boost” or “rocket boost”) is a synonym of “reblog” or “retweet” in Societal.co

Notifications does what it says on the tin. Again, this is across the fediverse. The settings button (top right) has a range of options for this column. You may want to turn off the “boop” sound, for example.

Local timeline is the live feed of all the toots of people on your server. On many servers, particularly smaller ones and ones focused on a particular topic, this is where the magic happens. It feels like a town square or Slack chatroom. You can reply to people from there and it’s a great place to meet people.

The federated timeline is a view of all the public toots Societal knows about from across the whole network (including local ones). The most common reason that something appears in the federated timeline is that someone from your server follows the author of that toot. This column moves fast, and can often be pretty wild. I enjoy setting that column to show only toots with media, hiding boosts, then seeing a constant stream of daft selfies, hot memes, and funky art.

You can also pin a column for a hashtag you’re interested in – just search for that hashtag and then in the column settings choose “pin” and done.

Where can i find more community knowledge articles?

1. What is Societal Social Network?
2. Setting up your profile
3. Posting toots
4. Using the network features
5. Set your preferences
6. User settings
7. Societal Twitter Crossposter
8. Promoting yourself and others
9. Societal Apps
10. What is a microblog?
11. What is federation?

How do I get the Societal App On Android?

1. Launch the “Safari” app
2. Open Societal.co
3. Tap the share icon (the button at the center of the footer on the bottom) scroll and tap "Add to Homescreen."
4. You'll be able to enter a name for the shortcut and then Safari will add the Societal app to your home screen.
5. Open the Societal app from your home screen.

How do I use other Android and iOS Apps?

1. Go to https://joinmastodon.org/apps
2. Download an app on your mobile device
3. Launch the App
4. For the instance enter: Societal.co
5. Now enter your user name and password

What is the origin of the word Societal?

The use of the adjective societal to relates to society and the network of social individuals on Societal.co including to not limited to the societal changes that come about as a result of Societal.co. People who join the Societal community make up a society, and anything connected to that group can be described as societal.  

What are societal connections?

Societal connections are the relationships you have with the people around you on the platform. They may be close, like family, friends, and co-workers, or more distant, like people you know casually or not.     

What is a decentralized network?

A decentralized network is a “trustless environment,” where there is no single point of failure. The nodes connected in the network are not dependent on a single server point and each node holds the entire copy of the network configurations.

At Societal, we believe that the future of online publishing is decentralized and open.

We believe that users of social networks should be able to control their social media experience on their own terms, rather than the terms set down by Big Tech. Societal is Community is a fresh take on one of the Internet's most popular applications: social networking. 

How does societal communicate with other instances?

Instances are not readily visible to every other instance. A pair of instances will communicate with each other only if there is a connection between a user on one instance ( i.e., a local user) and a user on the target instance. In such a case, the two instances is said to form a ‘federation’. Since complete freedom is given to owners to moderate the kind of content that is available to users of an instance, it naturally follows that users of a particular instance are usually like-minded, or know what they are signing up for when they join a particular instance.

Does societal accept donations?

Societal is sponsored by BestKnownHost.com