New terms of service for mastodon.social and mastodon.online, effective August 31, 2026

What this means for you

Mastodon is made of many servers. The company behind Mastodon runs two big ones: mastodon.social and mastodon.online. They have new rules for their users, which started on August 31, 2026. If your account is on one of these two servers, these rules apply to you, also when an app posts for you. More rules are coming in December 2026.

The details

• Scope: "These terms apply strictly to users registered on mastodon.social and mastodon.online." Independent servers keep their own rules.
• Dates: announced July 31, 2026; effective August 31, 2026. The terms API on mastodon.social returns effective_date: 2026-08-31, effective: true and succeeded_by: null as of November 7, 2026.
• History: a first version took effect on July 1, 2025. Draft terms were put up for community review in October 2025.
• What they cover, per the post: user responsibilities, account management, acceptable use, content ownership and how federation rights work on these servers.
• Content licence: the terms grant Mastodon a licence to make content available "via one or more APIs for application access" and RSS, and the licence ends when you delete the content (backups aside).
• No API rules: the text has no clauses on bots, automation, scraping or third-party apps, and the announcement does not mention API rate limits.
• Coming next: a December 2026 update adding dedicated service rules and DSA information (how to report illegal content, moderation and appeals).

What to do next

• Business owners: If your account is on mastodon.social or mastodon.online, read the new terms once.
• Marketers and agencies: Check which clients post from these two servers and watch for the December 2026 service rules.
• Developers: Nothing now. Read the terms through GET /api/v1/instance/terms_of_service and watch succeeded_by for the December update.