Good Tech Index
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Mastodon (self-hosted)

The GTI Label — this product's ethical and social footprint.

Social
Weighting: Balanced Climate first Labour first
A 81.1
81.1 / 100 medium

Weighted under the Labour first profile. 2 declared components across 2 layers.

The product itself

How this product scores on its own merits — its licence, ownership and openness — separate from the stack it's built on.

Own score medium 87.5

By layer

Hosting & network medium 62.5

Hetzner

Services high 97.5

No third-party trackers

By axis

The score is the vector — each axis is scored on its own, then weighted into the number above. Open an axis to see the reasoning behind it.

Data sovereignty & surveillance medium 83.3
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Where data lives and the surveillance capacity it grants. 5 = fully sovereign.

The product itself medium 4 / 5

You choose — or run — the instance that holds your data.

Hetzner medium 4 / 5
No third-party trackers high 5 / 5
Environmental footprint high 87.5
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Energy source, hardware lifecycle, water/cooling. Follows provenance.

Hetzner medium 4 / 5
No third-party trackers high 5 / 5
Local economic benefit high 62.5
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Does the spend stay in-region (5) or leave (1)?

Hetzner medium 3 / 5
No third-party trackers high 4 / 5
Market concentration high 87.5
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Does using this reinforce a chokepoint or monopoly? 5 = no lock-in / many alternatives.

Hetzner medium 4 / 5
No third-party trackers high 5 / 5
Openness & lock-in medium 91.7
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Can you leave, and can others reach it? 5 = open access with no account required and easy data export; 1 = a walled garden — account-gated, proprietary, hard to export.

The product itself medium 5 / 5

Open ActivityPub federation; full account migration and export.

Hetzner medium 4 / 5
No third-party trackers high 5 / 5
Ownership model medium 83.3
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Who benefits from ownership? Shareholder / private-equity extraction (1) vs worker-owned / nonprofit / state or public-good (5).

The product itself medium 4 / 5

Nonprofit (Mastodon gGmbH); instances run by their communities.

Hetzner medium 4 / 5
No third-party trackers high 5 / 5
Software freedom (FOSS) medium 83.3
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Is the software free & open-source, and under what licence? 5 = fully FOSS under an OSI-approved licence; 1 = proprietary / closed source.

The product itself medium 5 / 5

AGPL-licensed; anyone can run or fork a server.

Hetzner medium 3 / 5

You run an open stack on it; Hetzner's own tooling is proprietary.

No third-party trackers high 5 / 5

No proprietary third-party trackers; self-hosted OSS analytics.

Upstream labour high 75.0
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Chip fabrication, warehouse, data-labelling conditions. Follows provenance.

Hetzner medium 3 / 5
No third-party trackers high 5 / 5

Similar labels

Other products in the same space, best score first.

E 9.1
X (Twitter)
9.1 / 100