Mastodon✨ The first release candidate of Mastodon 4.0 is now officially available for testing! Find out what's new on the changelog:
Hairyloon@Mastodon
Probably a silly question, but we have a lot of newcomers.
What do we need to run a Mastodon and why should we want to?
Probably a silly question, but we have a lot of newcomers.
What do we need to run a Mastodon and why should we want to?
Eddie Coldrick 💻@Hairyloon What you need is a domain, a server and an SMTP or other email service login (e.g. SMTP on email server on the same server as your Mastodon, another email server you have or login to an email service e.g. Sengrid). Why? You are helping decentralise Mastodon by making it span various owners rather than a few, meaning others have less control over the moderation, etc. I run my own on a VPS from Contabo, who are really cheap. The Mastodon docs are really good: https://docs.joinmastodon.org
@eddie
I can see that is a good reason, but I can also see that that might spread things too thin...
I don't yet understand how the various mastodon servers are linked and integrated.
I can see that is a good reason, but I can also see that that might spread things too thin...
I don't yet understand how the various mastodon servers are linked and integrated.
@Hairyloon Not everyone needs to make a Mastodon instance. I only did it because all of the general servers closed signups due to the influx in users and it was a fun project last night 😂 They speak together through 'federation', specifically a protocol called ActivityPub. Basically when you post, it sends it off to other servers so it comes up on their server. No intermediary servers look at the message and pass it on - making it decentralised.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
@eddie
Ok, now I'm confused about the distinction between an instance and a server...
How does moderation work through ActivityPub?
I can see that if I set up an instance, then I would need to moderate it however I see fit, but if ActivityPub adds stuff from other servers, then I don't see how it can work...
@Hairyloon An instance runs on a server. Typically one instance is run on one server, but since a server could technically run multiple, the actual Mastodons running on the server are instances.
Moderation is done by the administrator of each instance. They moderate their own users posts. But if you have an instance, you can set up a blacklist to block instances posts from your server. If you have a problem with a post or whole instance, they should have contact emails on the instances.
Moderation is done by the administrator of each instance. They moderate their own users posts. But if you have an instance, you can set up a blacklist to block instances posts from your server. If you have a problem with a post or whole instance, they should have contact emails on the instances.
@eddie shouldn't the Blocklist block posts *to* my instance (or maybe my server)?
You said "From"...
You said "From"...
@Hairyloon I think you can also just report a post, which will go to the instance's administration/moderators.