Choosing to get emails for everything from Mastodon.

I just turned on email notifications for all events on both my Mastodon accounts.

Be aware this is a draft post — please adjust your expectations accordingly. Get in touch if this post could use an improvement.

This is a part of the 100 Days To Offload challenge.

On both my public and private Mastodon accounts today, I turned on email notifications for everything:

A screenshot from my SmallCamp account settings. The section heading reads, "Events for e-mail notifications" in uppercase. What follows is a selection of events including follow requests, boosts, favourites, mentions, reports, new account needing review, unreviewed hashtag is trending. Finally, another checklist item asks if digest e-mails should be sent.
A screenshot from my SmallCamp account settings.
A screenshot from my Fosstodon account settings.
A screenshot from my Fosstodon account settings.

But, why?

After looking through some Facebook emails from over 10 years ago (I’m currently sorting several mailboxes into one) — and similar — I realized how valuable they are to me.

Similarly, all my interactions on Mastodon might one day simply not exist anymore. Maybe I leave the network? Who knows. It’s just good to have this data with me in another open format, you can say. 🙂

Why not just use exports?

Mastodon’s export is also a good choice, but I find email more portable and a natural fit. Maybe I don’t want to write a viewer for its export file. Maybe the ones that are open source are not maintained. Could be anything.

And most of all, it’s all in one place — with all my memories.

Only left to wonder now if the message contents are also included for mentions or reports or direct messages in the e-mails. (Edit: They are!)

How do I handle so many emails?

I have set up a filter/rule that archives it and adds a label — so I don’t get any notifications as such.

I don’t mark it as read, since I sometimes just check my email instead of coming onto social media. That way, I have fewer distractions and still get caught up. 😊

Last updated on 05 August 2021. Join the discussion on Mastodon, or write me an email.

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