p.s. The complete thread from the developers at https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115989801184595302 has even more info about this initiative:

@Ember

It will, but getting them to step away from recommending mastodon.social is a massive step in the right direction.

Also they do leave the door open for forked software instances. The exact wording they use on their criteria list is:

"Run default Mastodon (for now)"

Also also, this is just about the default instances recommended up front, they would still have the complete listing behind that which does already include Glitch etc instances.

@eric

Indeed! And it's a really clever solution they've come up with, it solves two problems at once by prioritising servers in the user's own language or location and encouraging decentralisation that way.

Mastodon server admins, important news!

The Mastodon developers are going to stop suggesting mastodon.social as a "default server".

Instead, the "default" server suggestions are going to be ones for a user's language and/or geographical location.

If you run a public server that fulfils these criteria:

- Running vanilla Mastodon
- Mastodon Covenant compliant
- Have existed for 1+ year
- Have shut-down & disaster plans

...then see this post for details: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115989802617165343

#MastoAdmin