Please report any account that tells you that you need to verify your #Mastodon account to continue using it through a private message. It is a scam. We do not require identity verification. Real staff accounts either have a special role badge on their profile or are verified through the joinmastodon.org domain and will typically never reach out through private messages.
There is a new setting for server operators in #Mastodon 4.4, under Administration -> Server Settings -> Discovery, called "Allow external sites to see your Mastodon server as a traffic source". If you're running a server for a larger group of people there is no privacy downside to enabling this, and it will help make the fediverse more visible as a traffic source to the rest of the web.
