Mastodont

Mastodont is a CLI tool to import blocklists into Mastodon written in Node.js.

It uses the /admin/domain_blocks endpoint newly available in Mastodon v4 and therefore requires instances run on v4+.

Installation

Go to https://${YOUR_INSTANCE_URL}/settings/applications/new and create a new application called Mastodont with the permissions:

• admin:read:domain_allows
• admin:write:domain_allows

Save the application, click on it, and copy the value of Your access token to the clipboard.

Open a terminal and run:

> npm install -g mastodont

Usage

> mastodont

Mastodont operates interactively and requires only a Mastodon instance URL, an access token with the necessary permissions, and a text file containing a list of domains to block, one per line. The file can be hosted locally or remotely. A sample blocklist is provided in the examples folder at the root of this repository. You can also try mastodon-defederate, which will download blocklists from servers you trust.

Mastodont will prompt you for your instance URL, access token, and the location of the blocklist file. It will optionally save the former two options, along with your preferences for domain blocks, to a .mastodont.yml file in your home folder so that you don't need to enter them repeatedly.

If you want to skip the prompts, you can pass the values as arguments using the following flags:

Mastodont config

• --help: Show help
• -c $PATH, --config $PATH: Optional custom config file path
• --non-interactive: Disable interactive mode
• --save: Save config to default location
• --reset: Delete config (cannot be used with other options)

Instance config

• -e $URL, --endpoint $URL: Mastodon server URL
• -t $TOKEN, --access-token $TOKEN: Mastodon Access Token
• -b $LOCATION, --blocklist $LOCATION: Blocklist filepath or URL

Block config

• -s $LEVEL, --severity $LEVEL: Block severity level (limit, suspend, noop)
• --obfuscate: Obfuscate domains in public listing
• --reject-media: Reject media from domains (works with limit, noop)
• --reject-reports: Reject reports from domains (works with limit,noop)
• --private-comment $COMMENT: Private comment
• --public-comment $COMMENT: Public comment

Automation

Mastodont can be used to automatically update your blocklist on a regular basis. To do so, you can use a cron job or a CI workflow. Examples of a cron job and CI workflows are provided in the examples folder at the root of this repository.

Debugging

Something not working as expected? You can see more detailed debugging output if you add DEBUG=* before the command. For example:

> DEBUG=* mastodont

License

MIT

Author

@selfagency