SURF and Universities of the Netherlands are jointly exploring Mastodon as an open source platform for education and research in the Netherlands. In which public values are paramount. Join us and discover how students, researchers, staff and institutions can experiment with Mastodon in a low-threshold way.
Getting started with Mastodon
How do you get started? Below you’ll find more information on, among other things, registering, logging in, and creating a group account.
Register and login
Create an account on a Mastodon server. This will allow you to communicate with users on Mastodon servers worldwide. Would you like to use SURF’s Mastodon server? You can only do so if you are affiliated with an institution that is a member of SURF.
To register, follow these steps:
- Go to social.edu.nl in a web browser.
- Click on Login.
- Select SURFCONEXT.
- Select your institution.
- Log in using your existing institutional account.
- Check the details that your institution sends you (this is a one-off process).
- Click on the blue button at the bottom of the page to agree.
- Choose your Mastodon username. Please note: you will not be able to change your username later.
You’re now ready to complete your profile and start using Mastodon!
You can log in via a web browser or via a Mastodon app on your smartphone.
- Go to social.edu.nl.
- Click on ‘Log in’.
- Select SURFconext.
- Select your institution.
- Log in with your institutional account.
You are now logged in to SURF’s Mastodon pilot server.
On SURF’s Mastodon server, you can create group accounts as well as personal accounts. This allows several people to post on behalf of a single account, for example for an institution, research group, project, event or webcare team.
A group account works via SURFconext Invite. This allows multiple people to access a single account. They log in using their own personal institutional account. This means you do not need to share a common username and password.
How to request a group account:
- Send an email to mastodon@surf.nl.
- Please state the desired account name; this is mandatory. The name may contain letters, numbers and underscores, but no spaces, and must be no longer than 30 characters.
- Please also provide a mandatory email address, which will be linked to the group account. Notifications will be sent to this address.
Preferably use a functional email address for the group, such as one for a team, department or project. A personal institutional email address cannot be used for this purpose. If there is no group email address yet, please provide a different email address temporarily. - SURF will create the account and invite you to join the corresponding group in SURFconext Invite.
- Within SURFconext Invite, add other people yourself who need access to the group account.
Group members can be colleagues from within or outside your own institution. They must, however, be able to log in via SURFconext, i.e. be affiliated with a SURF-member institution.
The group account can be used within SURF’s Mastodon environment. The same account can also be used for other SURF services in the Fediverse, such as PeerTube via https://video.edu.nl. On the alternative video platform PeerTube, the sector, via SURF, retains control over software, data, policy and governance, just as it does with Mastodon.