👋 WelcomeWelcome to a social network of people that were born, live, and work in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.Similar to other social networks, you can make your own profile, post messages, images, polls, videos, and follow other members.
oslo.town is owned and operated by people in Oslo. It's free to use and there's no advertising. There's also no big companies trying to monitor your every move.
Sign up now to claim your unique username.
🧬 How does this work?Just like a real town there is lots of things happening in your local area. When you are signed up, clicking the
Local /
Lokal tab will show you everything that is happening on this website. If you want to explore the wider world, click the
Federated /
Felles tab to see
everything happening across a lot of websites connected to this one.
When you see someone interesting,
Follow /
Følg that person for future updates. They will appear in your
Home /
Hjem timeline. You can follow anyone in the whole world - whether they are local or not.
When you see something you didn't want to see, you can
Mute /
Demp or
Block /
Blokkér that person or the whole website. If you see something on the local timeline which you don't think should be on the internet, you can
Report /
Rapportér it to The Mayor.
For a more geeky insight into how the site works, you can
watch this YouTube video or
read the Documentation.
🏵️ The Mayor When you sign up to the website, it is recommended that you follow
@themayor to get the latest updates straight from the oslo.town town hall.
🙋 FAQWho actually runs this site?The site is run by the user
@matt but also pretends to be the character of
@themayor. This is also why so many things are in English so far - his Norwegian sucks. Sorry about that.
Is this linked to Oslo Kommune?No. The site is independently run and is not endorsed by Oslo Kommune. The logo of
oslo.town is meant to be a parody and tribute to the official Oslo logo, but that is where the link ends. The account
@kommune is not currently maintained or monitored by Oslo Kommune.
How much does it cost The Mayor to run oslo.town?Presently, the main costs are the domain(s), the hosting, and time. But we don't talk about the last one because
@themayor is working on a volunteer basis.
- Domains
The site is set up on oslo.town which costs around 600 NOK per calendar year. - Hosting
The hosting is from masto.host. We currently pay 1800 USD per month. - Marketing
Occasionally, oslo.town prints promotional stickers and cards from moo.com which costs 220 NOK per 100 cards, and 240 NOK per 100 stickers. Postage and import tax not included.
How do you pay for this?We take donations. You can donate via
Patreon,
Ko-Fi, or
PayPal and
Vipps.
All donations to to the running cost of oslo.town and other projects listed on the
Patreon page. The remaining costs are covered by
@matt - who is also
@themayor.
Why should I use this instead of Facebook / Twitter / etc. ?Nobody can pretend that
oslo.town can replace any popular social networking website, but it's meant to be a nicer alternative. Unlike the big social networking sites, we don't collect your data and sell it. You are not a product. The whole point of this site is
community and being able to connect with people locally and globally.
Is my information private?The goal is to collect as little information about the users as possible and that when information is collected, it is stored for as short time as possible. If you care to, you can read the full
Privacy Policy.
To protect your privacy even more, please don't share any personal information with anyone on the site. Think carefully about the username you choose. Share only what you are comfortable sharing.
Please consider how long you wish your posts to be available for. Registered users can set up
Automated Post Deletion which will delete your posts after your chosen number of weeks.
Do my posts get listed in Google / Bing / another search engine?In order to protect your privacy, we have opted-out of listing your profile and toots on search engines. You can turn this on yourself in
the settings.
Please be aware that anyone can still screenshot your toots and sites like
archive.is or
web.archive.org could potentially still create a copy of your publicly listed toots.
How do I only see languages I understand?When you hit the Federated timeline, you will see many users from around the world speaking their native languages. To filter these views to just languages you know, you should
set up the your language preferences.
How do I get featured on the Explore page?Simple! To get featured on the
Explore page, just go to
Edit Profile and check the box which says
Suggest account to others.
I see offensive content. Can you block it?If you see an account you see posting offensive content, please use the
Block and Report functionality. If this is content that is not hosted on
oslo.town then check the option which says
Forward to... which will report the account to the appropriate administrator.
Directly from the offensive post, you can also click the option
Block Domain which will prevent you from seeing any future content from that website.
We have a set of server rules you should follow. In addition to this, the policy at
oslo.town is as follows:
- We will ensure that bad things don't happen on the Local timeline.
- We attempt to hide (but not block) any NSFW or spam content from the Federated Timeline.
- We block any external accounts or domains that are known to frequently spamming our users.
- Please allow up to 48 hours to process reports.
However, we do not aim to act as your moral compass and will not do domain-wide blocks based on the users of that instance having wild opinions. You should be able to follow anything (even the hidden content) and block these domains or people at your own discretion.
A full list of hidden or blocked domains is published below.