[!WARNING] We recently released important security updates fixing major security updates. If you are using Mastodon v4.2.6 or below, v4.1.14 or below, or any older version, please update as soon as possible.

See updates for the 4.2.x branch, the 4.0.x branch and the 3.5.x branch.

Changelog

[!IMPORTANT] This update changes registrations to be closed by default.

Running a social media platform where anyone can sign up without active moderation is dangerous.

We are changing the default, so that opening registrations is always a conscious choice. If you have never changed or saved the registrations mode yourself, this update will switch your server to not accepting new users. Simply change the setting again after the update if you wish to restore the old behaviour.

Added

• Add hourly task to automatically require approval for new registrations in the absence of moderators (ClearlyClaire, ClearlyClaire) In order to prevent future abandoned Mastodon servers from being used for spam, harassment and other malicious activity, Mastodon will now automatically switch new user registrations to require moderator approval whenever they are left open and no activity (including non-moderation actions from apps) from any logged-in user with permission to access moderation reports has been detected in a full week. When this happens, users with the permission to change server settings will receive an email notification. This feature is disabled when EMAIL_DOMAIN_ALLOWLIST is used, and can also be disabled with DISABLE_AUTOMATIC_SWITCHING_TO_APPROVED_REGISTRATIONS=true.

Changed

• Change registrations to be closed by default on new installations (ClearlyClaire) If you are running a server and never changed your registrations mode from the default, updating will automatically close your registrations. Simply re-enable them through the administration interface or using tootctl settings registrations open if you want to enable them again.

Fixed

• Fix processing of remote ActivityPub actors making use of Link objects as Image url (ClearlyClaire)
• Fix link verifications when page size exceeds 1MB (ClearlyClaire)

Moderation tooling

While we work on better tools to fight spam and abuse, we want to draw your attention to the tools already at your disposal:

• Manual review for new user registrations
• Blocking disposable/temporary e-mail providers (such as any.pink being used in the current wave)
• Setting up hCaptcha

Known issues

When setting up a new server, the admin account created by the mastodon:setup task will not be automatically approved. You will need to approve it from the command-line interface with tootctl modify <username> --approved.

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.1.16, use git fetch && git checkout v4.1.16.

[!NOTE] As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

[!WARNING] The minimum required Ruby version has been bumped to 3.0 in Mastodon v4.1.14.

External dependencies have not changed compared to v4.1.14, the compatible Ruby, PostgreSQL, Node, Elasticsearch and Redis versions are the same, that is:

• Ruby: 3.0
• PostgreSQL: 9.5 or newer
• Elasticsearch (optional, for full-text search): 7.x
• Redis: 4 or newer
• Node: >= 14, < 18
• ImageMagick: 6.9.7-7 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.1.15.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations.

Non-Docker only:

1. Install dependencies: bundle install and yarn install --frozen-lockfile

Both Docker and non-Docker:

1. Restart all Mastodon processes