Domain Limits

Via the settings panel, GoToSocial allows you to create "domain limits" to modify how your instance handles posts, follow requests, media, and accounts from remote domains.

This gives you the power to "fine-tune" federation with a problematic domain, without having to resort to putting a full domain block in place to cut off federation entirely.

For example, you can use a domain limit to mute all accounts on a given domain except for ones people on your instance follow, and/or to mark all media from a given domain as "sensitive", etc.

You can view, create, and remove domain limits using the instance admin panel.

Each domain limit has five components that you can tweak to tune federation with a limited domain:

• Content warning
• Media policy
• Follows policy
• Statuses policy
• Accounts policy

Content Warning

Any text that you set as a content warning will be added to each post from the limited domain as part of the content warning / subject field when that post is viewed using a client app (in the home or public timeline, for example).

If the post already has a content warning, any text set as the limit content warning will be prepended to the existing content warning with a semicolon, so that the existing content warning is not lost.

Without domain limit content warning (in Pinafore):

With domain limit content warning (in Pinafore):

Media Policy

You can apply a media policy in order to change whether and how your instance processes media attachments from the limited domain.

For example, you can force all media from the limited domain to be marked sensitive when viewed using a client app. Or you can reject media from the limited domain entirely, which will prevent your instance from downloading, processing, or storing it (this includes attachments, avatars, headers, and emoji).

With a "reject" policy in place, media from the limited domain will still be linked to when a post containing media is viewed via a client app, so that users can still view the media on the remote instance if they choose to:

Follows Policy

You can apply a follows policy to determine how follows from the limited domain are processed.

Any restrictions put in place only apply to new follows sent to your instance from the moment you apply the policy; existing relationships will not be affected. Also, accounts on your instance will still be able to follow accounts from the limited domain as normal.

If you set this policy to "manual approval", then all follow requests originating from the limited domain will require manual approval, even if they target an "unlocked" account on your instance, ie., an account that would normally not place any restrictions on follows.

If you set this policy to "reject non-mutual", then each follow request originating from the limited domain will be automatically rejected unless it is a "follow-back" or "mutual" follow. For example, if user A on this instance already follows or follow-requests user B from the limited domain, user B will be able to send a follow (request) to user A as normal. However, if user A on this instance does not already follow or follow-request user B from the limited domain, any attempt by user B to follow user A will be automatically rejected.

If you set this policy to "reject" then any follow requests originating from the limited domain will be instantly and automatically rejected, without creating any notifications.

Statuses Policy

You can apply a statuses policy to determine if and how statuses (aka posts) from the limited domain are filtered when viewed using a client app. Any filters applied via this policy apply in the contexts home, public, and thread.

If you set this to "warn" then a warn-level filter will be applied to posts from accounts from the limited domain. Users will have to click "show anyway" (depending on their client) in order to show posts filtered in this way. This allows you to add a small level of friction to showing posts from the limited domain.

If you set this to "hide" then a hide-level filter will be applied to posts from accounts from the limited domain. This means that posts from filtered accounts will be hidden from the public/federated timeline, and boosts of and replies by those accounts will also not be shown. However, posts will still be visible when navigating to an account's profile page. This allows you to add a larger level of friction to showing posts from the limited domain.

No action:

Warn:

Hide:

Accounts Policy

You can apply an accounts policy to mute (aka silence) accounts from the limited domain by default. If you set this policy value to "mute", then posts by muted accounts will not appear in most timelines or threads. This is similar to how the statuses policy "hide" option works.