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Post Privacy Options

Most platforms have just a couple visibility options; something like public, followers only, and direct messages. Pedestal has a few others that can be a little confusing if you don’t take a second to understand them. Stick with me here for a second.

(Pssst… watching is way easier than reading!)

Mastodon has 4 options for post privacy settings, but we run a version that adds 2 more options: Federated or Local only. The Local only setting is a key feature not available to most Mastodon instances, but this leads to a wonky situation where you can have 7 different possible combinations for your posts.

If you’re a power user and want to know what each option does in detail, I’ve laid it all out below including a chart for all 7 combinations. But if you just want the TLDR, here it is.

If you want to have an online presence/following

Choose Public & Federated as your defaults. This makes your posts discoverable by anyone on any server and anyone can view them on your profile whether they’re logged in or not.

👆This is the default for new accounts on Pedestal

If you’re here just to talk to people on Pedestal

Choose Public & Local-only as your defaults. This makes your posts visible & discoverable only on Pedestal.social. “Public” means your posts will be visible in the Local Timeline even to people on Pedestal who don’t follow you. If you reply to a post from another server, it will be federated by necessity.

To restrict posts to followers from any instance

Choose Followers only & Federated as your defaults.

To restrict posts to only followers on Pedestal.social

Choose Followers only & Local-only as your defaults.

Setting your defaults

To set your defaults, head to Preferences and choose Preference > Other

(Or click here: https://pedestal.social/settings/preferences/other)

Privacy

Select from the dropdown

Federated

Checked = Federated, unchecked = Local only

(don’t ask me why the name of it is different here 🤷)

Don’t forget to click Save Changes!

And that’s it! You can still override these settings on a per-post basis. If you use a third party app to access Pedestal it will not have a Federated/Local only toggle when drafting a new post but will respect your default setting.

The Nitty Gritty

Privacy Settings

Public Visible to anyone inside or outside of Pedestal, whether or not they follow you or have a Mastodon account.

Unlisted Same as public, but won’t be shown in Mastodon’s public timelines (i.e. someone else’s Federated or Local Timelines).

Followers only Visible only to logged-in followers on your profile or in their Home feed. Anyone mentioned that doesn’t follow you will receive the post in their notifications. Post cannot be boosted, except by yourself.

Mentioned people only

These are Direct Messages and will be visible in the Direct Messages Timeline only to you and the people you specifically mention.

Federation Status

Federated Posts will be visible from other Mastodon instances that are aware of Pedestal.social

Local-only Posts will only be visible to users logged in on Pedestal.social

Setting Privacy & Federation Status

Like I said above, Privacy & Federation status are two separate settings that work together but these two options generate 7 different posting possibilities and if you really want to know how that affects things, I made you something:

⚠️ = Visible if user is logged in

A note on using Third Party apps

As stated above, if you use a third party app to access Pedestal it will not have a Federated/Local only toggle when drafting a new post but will respect your default setting. There is an option, however, to set your post as Local only if your default is Federated.

There is a custom emoji you can add to your post that will set it to Local only. Just include the text :local_only: (including colons) in your post and it will not be federated.wfplfjlw