So how cool is this…you can run your own social media server. Mastodon (hadn’t even heard of it until last week) is a decentralized social media server that allow anybody with a little bit of tech skills to host their own social media network.
Still figuring out what I’m gonna do with it. But still cool. Stay tuned.
What is Mastodon and how to use it
Mastodon is an open-source social media platform that can be hosted by anyone with the skillset to set it up. I’ve got mine running on a Raspberry Pi that I had just hanging out. Open source simply means that the code is freely visible and available to anyone; typically, this means that it is less susceptible to malicious code because anyone can review it prior to using it. These programs are usually dependent on donations to survive, since most of the time the people who write them are doing it just because they can.
In particular, with Mastodon you sign up to follow “instances”. Think of instances like Facebook groups. Each instance is a hosted server, and each hosted server has its own set of users and followers. To find an instance, you just type in the name of the server (in our case, social.themays.me) to join (or request permission to join.
Server Access
Cool thing about Mastodon is it is available both on desktop and mobile, and has a fully responsive mobile app. Couple of things with our server:
- Accounts are moderated. Not just anybody can sign up. To join your account will have to be approved by an admin.
- We’ve got some basic rules. Similar to our website group pages, we don’t like bots and we don’t tolerate trolls.
- The platform is pretty similar to Twitter in its functionality.
- You can upload media, but to preserve server resources all uploads are limited to 2MB or less.
Author: Zack
Pharmacist, tech guy, pianist, lover of beer, gamer, beach bum. Probably missed something. Just assume I'm into a little bit of everything.
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