Some extended thoughts:

I’m truly sad to hear the discourse surrounding #mstdnca and learn of the allegations against its instance owner, Chad.

I made my fediverse home with mstdnca in Nov 2022 when there was only 1600 of us. Me and Chad connected and I became the 2nd volunteer moderator. We also became friends.

That was a pretty exciting time for the mstdnca community. A Canadian social media alternative was growing! We had prominent figures + politicians joining.. we had an organization sponsoring us. There was lot’s of promise for our growing community.

During this time, there were promises made to ensure our community could thrive and to do that we needed governance, boards, oversight. A community building project I was eager to participate in.

But it never happened. Why?

Most early adopters will note the first immediate reason was because of needing to keep up with the servers exponential growth. The “growing pains” of the instance.

Another reason I’ve read is that no one offered to help, and I’m here to say that’s not true, atleast not at the beginning.

Myself and the 2 other moderators were highly skilled in different areas, and we had a ton of other highly-skilled people willing to help. I put out a call for volunteers for different groups and committees and we had dozens of people eager to participate.

But nothing ever got off the ground.

I volunteered a total of 6 months before resigning. There was some discourse within the volunteer team, stemming what felt like a lack of leadership and direction.

Despite this, Chad became a good friend of mine—but we haven’t spoken since last year when he didn’t respond to a text I sent expressing something that was bothering me in our friendship. The community stopped feeling like home so I left and came to ottawa.place a few months ago.

While my reasons for leaving were ultimately personal, I can’t help to take note that 3.5 years later, the promise of governance, board, and oversight has still not been met and the growing pains haven’t ended.

Edit: grammar

1/2

RE: https://mstdn.party/@austin/111603979705045480

Hello #MstdnCa users! As a former user on mstdn.ca I want to let you know that your admin did this to your data before (and tried to skirt anti-spam laws). We don't use your data for fundraising here (though we still encourage you to donate!). And if you are looking for a simple instance to join, why not check us out?

If a leader in a non-profit or other organization is accused of theft (even if in another organization) they would normally step aside from any position of authority until such time as the matter is resolved.

With a Mastodon instance with a sole owner/administrator, and the servers in their house, that is not as easy. For mstdn.ca to continue operating it is essential.

In the meantime the choice is for the users to make their own decisions. I have chosen to move away from mstdn.ca while this is resolved.

This is a sad situation as someone with a lot of time for #Mastodon and a former (small) donor to #mstdnca

RE: https://mstdn.ca/@announcements/116266821872646846

This is scheduled to be a long-overdue financial update on #mstdnca, with details on the recent switch to self-hosted servers, and other updates on management & moderation.

https://news.mstdn.ca/state-of-the-instance-spring-2026/

But given yesterday's news about our benevolent dictator getting sued, with accusations of embezzlement, by another non-profit where he was serving as treasurer, things might get off agenda.

Either way, probably worth making an effort to participate if you still have a @@mstdn.ca handle. Sunday Mar 22, 3pm Edmonton time.

Edit: The session has been postponed. "A new date and time will be provided soon" per the announcements on the server and in edits to the blog post linked above.
No reason given.

RE: https://mstdn.ca/@announcements/116266821872646846

As a volunteer moderator on #mstdnca I want to spread the word about this - check your email, fellow @mstdn.ca kids. We want your engagement and help continuing to build and support this community!

Especially invited & encouraged are women, people of colour, queer, trans, and non-binary folks - your voices are important and welcome in our community and in how the instance operates too!

It’s spring? Maybe? Featuring the Mastodon Canada servers

#mstdnca #spring #mastoadmin #sysadmin

This is a notice that we will be hosting our Spring 2026 State of the Instance on Sunday, March 22, 2026, at 3 PM MDT (9:00PM UTC)

We will be hosting this meeting on Jitsi and will be open to Mastodon Canada members only. You will receive an email at the address registered to your account in the coming days with a link to our private meeting.

#mstdnca

https://news.mstdn.ca/state-of-the-instance-spring-2026/

This has been such a game-changer for me.

Our new custom-developed back-end hooks into all our resources and provides a holistic view of our infrastructure in a single pane of glass. We can dig into each service and application for troubleshooting and analysis, but the biggest feature is that it pushes a notification when new updates are available.

This way, I'm not logging into each asset individually; I just say "yup, looks good, update," and it does it.

Years saved off my life.

I'll share more about this tool during our upcoming Spring State of the Instance, of which the date will be announced this upcoming week.

And yes, I will be offering the repo for others to fork and use when I'm comfortable doing so. It's very custom-tailored to our infrastructure, but I'm sure many aspects can be reused.

#MastoAdmin #mstdnca