Privacy Settings

GoToSocial offers Mastodon-style privacy settings for posts. In order from most to least private, these are:

• Direct
• Mutuals-only
• Private/Followers-only
• Unlisted
• Public

Whatever privacy setting you choose for a post, GoToSocial will do the best it can to ensure that your posts don't appear to users on instances that you've blocked, or to users that you've blocked directly.

Unlike with some other fediverse server implementations, GoToSocial uses a default post setting of unlisted rather than public for new accounts. Our philosophy here is that posting something public should always be a conscious decision rather than a default.

Please note that while GoToSocial respects these privacy settings very strictly, other server implementations cannot necessarily be trusted to do so: there are bad actors on the fediverse. As with any social media, you should think carefully about what you post and to whom.

Direct

Posts with a visibility of direct will only appear to the post author, and to users who are mentioned in the post. Take the following post for example:

Hey @whoever@example.org, this is a private/direct post! Only we can see this!

If this message was written by @someone@server.com then only @whoever@example.org and @someone@server.com would be able to see it.

As the name implies, direct posts are best used when you want to communicate directly with one or more people.

However, direct posts are *not- a suitable replacement for end-to-end encrypted messaging offered by things like Signal and Matrix. If you want to communicate directly, but you're not communicating sensitive information, then direct posts are fine. If you need to have a sensitive + secure conversation, use something else!

Direct posts can be liked/faved, but they cannot be boosted.

Direct posts are *not- accessible via a web URL on your GoToSocial instance.

Mutuals-only

WARNING

Mutuals-only posts are not currently functional.

Posts with a visibility of mutuals_only will only appear to the post author, and to *mutual follows- of the post author. In other words, they can only be seen by others if two conditions are met:

1. The other account follows the post author.
2. The post author follows the other account back.

This is useful for when you want to post something that you only want friends to see.

Mutuals-only posts can be liked/faved, but they cannot be boosted.

Mutuals-only posts are *not- accessible via a web URL on your GoToSocial instance.

Private/Followers-only

Posts with a visibility of private will only be visible to the post author, and to people who follow the post author. This is similar to mutuals_only, but only the first condition needs to met; the post author doesn't need to follow the other account back.

This is useful for when you want to make announcements to people who follow you, or share something slightly less private than mutuals_only.

Private/followers-only posts can be liked/faved, but they cannot be boosted.

Private/followers-only posts are *not- accessible via a web URL on your GoToSocial instance.

Unlisted

Posts with a visibility of unlisted (sometimes called unlocked posts) are semi-public. They will be sent to anyone who follows you, and they can be boosted into the timelines of people who don't follow you, but they won't appear on Federated or Local timelines, and they won't appear on your public profile.

Unlisted posts are useful when you want to allow a post to spread, but you don't want it to be immediately visible to everyone. They are also useful when you want to make public-ish posts, but without clogging up Federated/Local timelines.

Unlisted posts can be liked/faved, and they can be boosted.

Unlike with Mastodon, unlisted posts are *not- accessible via a web URL on your GoToSocial instance!

Public

Posts with a visibility of public are *fully- public. That is, they can be seen via the web, and they will appear in Local and Federated timelines, and they are fully boostable. public is the ultimate 'let my post be seen everywhere' setting, for when you want something to be widely available and easy to distribute.

Public posts can be liked/faved, and they can be boosted.

Public posts are accessible via a web URL!