About 500 Social

The deliberately small online community

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
From November 2024 Apple are forcing Patreon to use their payment processor within the app. That means all Patreon purchases done through the iOS app are subject to Apple’s 30% fee. If you’re an iOS user, I’d recommend purchasing a membership via the Patreon website, not the iOS app.

You can read more about it here.

Hi there 👋🏻

This page has exists to provide you with more information about 500 Social, like why it exists, how it all works, and how we expect our members to behave on the platform.

So without further ado, let’s get stuck in, shall we?

Why 500 Social exists

500 Social is run by Kev Quirk, I also co-admin another Mastodon instance, Fosstodon.

Fosstodon has become a very large instance, sporting over 60,000 members across the world, and I miss the days of when it felt like a small community. So I decided to start 500 Social, which has 3 goals:

  1. To be deliberately small, with a maximum of 500 members.
  2. To be loosely tech focussed.
  3. Require a paid membership of $2/month to ensure that the project is sustainable, but more importantly, to ensure members are invested in 500 Social.

Who can join 500 social?

Anyone who can afford $2/month and is willing to abide by our expectations.

500 Social has a deliberately loose topic of “technology”. So if you’re interested in technology of any kind, you’re welcome here. That could be anything that’s tech or tech adjacent, like:

Can I post about other stuff on 500 Social?

OF COURSE! We actually encourage it. We want “tech” to be the interest that underpins our member’s interests, but it isn’t what defines us.

We want you to post about your other interests, be it your family, your home, your pets, the art that you do in your spare time, your motorbikes, your cars, your tattoos, anything (a long as it abides by our expectations).

How it all works

So like we said earlier, there’s a requirement for all members to pay $2/month for an account on 500 Social. If you decide you want to become a member, here’s how it works:

  1. You sign up on Patreon for $2/month
  2. Once you’ve successfully signed up, you will receive and email from me with an invite link to join Mastodon
  3. Use the link to choose a username then start enjoying the community

Note: If you cancel your subscription on Patreon, we will disable your account on Mastodon.

Member expectations

I don’t think we need a full Code of Conduct for 500 Social. So instead, I’ve decided to simply write some ground rules here that everyone is expected to follow. In the future, if I feel the need the need to write a full CoC, I will, but we’re all nice people here, right? I’m sure that won’t be needed.

Ok, here’s the expectations:

I think that pretty much covers it for now. I’ll add more if/when the need requires it.

On politics

Woah woah woah. Hang on there, sparky…no politics? WTF is that all about? Politics are very important.

Yup, I agree. Politics are extremely important, and it’s also extremely important to debate politics and political opinions. It’s one of the cornerstones of freedom of speech.

However, 500 Social isn’t the place for that. Sometimes people want a break from all the seriousness and awful things going on in the world. That’s what I want 500 Social to be. I want it to be a lighthearted place where people can talk about the things that make them feel good. Generally speaking (in my experience at least), politics rarely give people the warm and fuzzies.

I say all this not to diminish the importance of political topics. To stress again, politics are important I’d just prefer people don’t post about them on the 500 Social timeline. If members of 500 Social want to reply to existing conversations about political topics, that’s fine as long as it’s polite discourse.