73 HB9ERY QSL

mastodon project to gotosocial

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 Z

I have tried several times to self-host the official opensource project mastodon. I’m much more minimalist-minded, such as supporting project like Gemini, as I’m from unix-shells world. I prefer focusing on contents rather than on cosmetics, like the bloated web pages of today.

Gemini is a minimalist protocol, meant to avoid how bloated weird HTTP went. Minimalism permits fast loading, no diverting cosmetics, so small attack surface, removes pressure on server resources. I prefer to focus on contents, like in a book, still layout setup with markdown, but no weird unsafe javascript. TLS is mandatory. By design there are no places for long extensions options. Minimalism rule prevails. So no goal to extend…extend…extend.. and…wait…we’re back to bloated HTTP..oh nooo!

Mastodon is an awesome platform but maintaining the official server is quit time eating. After several versions upgrades conflicts nightmare with ruby and other frameworks included, I gave up, as what was meant to be lightweight server management, easily falls into hours of issues solving, which is really not what I planned for. I really don’t blame the project at all. It is a wonderful project, but it is rather heavyweight with all the components for the timeslots I can reserve relating to mastodon server management.

Then I found gotosocial and it seems to really meet my needs and the design principles I adhere with. gotosocial is written in Go, one of my favourite programming languages, this is a welcome sign. The project seems to be very focus with privacy, user respect, simple straightforward options. Again, that kind of minimalism is a sign of good design for me.

No external dependencies apart from a database (or just use SQLite!).: wow…sounds like the developers share same ideas as me. Simple, lightweight, safe, are critical concepts for a fediverse instance. It has minimal resource footprint, so a good candidate to host on a raspberrypi4 for instance.

In terms of security, they seem to be quite clever for visibility of posts. Builtin support for let’s encrypt, 2FA integration, can use sqlite3.

So far So good, while still considered beta release, I plan to setup my own gotosocial instance soon. I’ll let you know.

73 Julien

I stopped my self hosted mastodon server

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 Z

I always have been driven by knowledge sharing (open source, open hardware, open science, sci hub) and minimalism. I specially enjoy embedded systems, microcontrollers, ne555 and opamps.

My computer world is fully in the unix world: keep it as simple as possible. Build small things that do it very good and provide interfaces, APIs.

I am a pure evangelist of command line interface, against all those complex ui. i am convinced that cli encourages us to formulate and structure our goals towards machine usage.

I really disagree with interfaces such as ai assistant. This tends to interrupt thinking constructions. I can ask for information but I need to formulate my question correctly, this helps me to confirm that I understand what I look for. Otherwise think again before asking and come back.

Asking good questions means we understand the context, the issue. If we can ask approximate questions, ai assistant will guide us to answers, but my critical issue remains that I do not understand at first.

Sure I can delegate mass data analysis to computers, but that’s really different else as relying for an assistant for any kind of approximate half-built request.

So i’m a much bigger fan of ncurses-like applications than heavy ajax|qt|electron ui frameworks. minimalism permits to focus on what is required and forget about diverting cosmetics (LaTeX vs ms word).

I’m a big supporter of projects such as Gemini against bloated web of 2024.

Having said that, let me come back to mastodon. ) I nerver was interested into using proprietary service such as Facebook or Twitter. So when mastodon arises, I was happy and curious.

ActivityPub is a wonderful protocol for integrations, interoperability. We need such powerful protocols to become very popular and common.

However, while discovering mastodon, I became more and more deceived. Sure it free and opensource software. Sure it is a federated project.

But looks like they re-created bloated heavyweight applications that usually happen in the proprietary world of editors.

I had numerous issues for security updates, puma versions conflicts, ruby, etc… All this to exchange text messages with cat pictures?? …something is wrong here…

I stopped my self-hosted server.

I prefer to build pubs or rooms for secure scuttlebutt social network. It brings interesting different semantics else as usual social network (commercial) service.

I also particpate and encourage mesh radio networks such as meshtastic and nomadnet/reticulum.

mablab mastodon upgrade fail

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Mon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 Z

The recent AUR upgrade failed. I will fix it during the week.

Thank you.

mablab mastodon instance is back again

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 00:00:00 Z

Finally, moved to a Archlinux server instance, server is back online.

mablab mastodon instance is broken due to Debian 12 upgrade

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 Z

The instance is currently out of service due to Ruby versions conflicts AFAIU. Will work on this during next weekend.

mablab mastodon instance is alive and under preparation

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 Z

I have started my own instance of mastodon…finally. I prepare this server to be a small size community (less than 100 users probably).

I need to prepare the policies, chart, etc… However I want to keep the numbers of users rather small because I don’t plan to grow much and prefer to focus on small groups of people, federating with others. Also, for moderation, I won’t have a lot of time to deal with, so clear rules and clear blocking when abuse occurs.

Stay tuned, more to come soon, Xmas is coming ;-)

mablab instance ..not yet public for signup..

Why twitter users keep complaining about censorship?

jma@mbuf.net (jma) — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 00:00:00 Z

## Intro

This article will only consider a short message service over ther Internet to build a social network. We assume private and high privacy is not required, so end-to-end encryption is not mandatory, users post public-oriented messages. User accounts are not meant to be hidden, nor anonymous at all.

## Twitter model

Twitter is a proprietary and fully centralized model. Terms of service didn’t read is a nice web site that summarizes complex terms of service, most users never read and care about.

This is the result for Twitter:

Now, would you still consider fair to complain against Twitter that they apply the terms of service you just accepted to use the service? Isn’t that weird to pressure Twitter directors to disrespect their terms of service just because you disagree?

Sure you didn’t care for the terms of service when you started using it, sure you don’t care for legal contexts, sure you only complain when something happens against you interest.

As in many areas, if a recurrent issue occurs, don’t point at people, but consider the model you are using and the model you contribute to sustain.

Proprietary centralized models can only lead to such censorship situations. So why use it and persist using it? Whoever is at the board of directors, the centralized proprietary model work with profit and does not care about freedom of information.

A small group of people cannot decide for everyone, that just doesn’t work, because we all have different interest, desires, goals, and groups sharing same goals will oppose at a certain time to other groups. So letting a small group lead a centralized model, means you rely on their decisions.

It is a very popular platform, this is true. But popular doesn’t enforce you to use it. Or let’s put this way: as long as so many people don’t care about censorship power in the hands of Twitter directors (whoever they are or will be), Twitter will continue to be so popular.

So, assuming people turn to another service, most users will be reachable on another service. And…what if this other service provides a magic concept, Internet has brought for its resilience,

interoperability?…Hey that could be cool…this would mean any application built this this interoperability mechanism can communicate with another….like…email…

Every Internet user has probably at leat one email address. However there are many many different email services on the Internet. Nobody cares who is the hosting email service, it just works with anyone having an email address. This is plain stupid for any usual user.

This is interoperability : you don’t care who provides the email service, as long as the email service is interoperable with the others.

Before Internet became popular, it was the war of proprietary networks and systems. For the older readers, remember PC vs Mac war? You wouldn’t be able to share documents easily. If you had subscribed to network A, you could not connect to network B, and so on.. It was a fight to who would enslave most consumers. Doesn’t this sound like proprietary online services today?….think twice…

Do you really want to use and support models of communication from the 80s? Or would you prefer to take advantage of the benefits of modern features Internet permit? Because…yes..Twitter is a model of communication from the 80s…event 70s… I mention twitter in this article, but Instagram, tiktok, all share the same old model. They have built a model from the 80s on top on Internet…..ahem…what revolution…

## Mastodon model

mastodon is a federated, decentralized model of social network for short messages (500 characters). It is build of a free software license that protects from a company to be bought and become a proprietary platform.

Mastodon is built is the all the modern concept, features, and advantages Internet permit. It does not lie to you as being new while being what people used in the 80s.

Federated means, as for email, that anyone can run a mastodon server, being someone into computers, an association, a club, a group of friends, a school, a university, a family, a city hall, you-name-it..

So there are a lot of mastodon servers on the Internet, but those do not belong, as oppose for Twitter to the same board of directors or sharehlders should I say, to be more accurate. Each mastodon server, or group of servers, belong to a different entity.

Each entity has different interests, rules, policies. So you can select an existing instance of a mastodon server, or run you own, self-hosted, or community hosted, managed.

Each mastodon server can then interact with the others and build a global social network, as email today build a global network of email servers but run by many any different entities.

Federation is built dynamically and rely on the users of a server to follow people from other server instances. As long as you follow a user from another server instance, or, some from another server instance follow you, The mastodon server will share posts with the other server instance. This means that the interaction with other mastodon servers evolves, as much as user interact with other user account across the social network. It follows users habits.

Now, with this big picture in mind, do you see that interoperability is key to federated models, federated models are important keys to fight against censorship? One director of an entity cannot decide for other entities.

Mastodon uses a protocol called ActivityPub, W3C standard since 2018, so public 4 years since this article post. This protocol permits interoperability with any application also using the same public protocol. This means that Posts (Toots) from Mastodon can also be received from other social networks, and Mastodon users can follow user from others social networks.

Hey! But this is cool, so I don’t fear losing my friends if they use a different social network!! Correct. So what other social networks provide that awesome modern Internet feature?

Friendica social network
Nextcloud file sharing and management application
PeerTube federated video streaming network
PixelFed Instagram-like in the libre-free-software world
Misskey social network like Mastodon
Plume federated blogging
Hubzilla web sites federation
Socialhome social network
Pleroma social network

Fediverse is the social network. Find here the map of the network.

So…you see that this a completely different model from Twitter, ActivityPub ensures you can continue to interact with users of all these applications/services.

To be fair, the principal mastodon server reported via tosdr.org is not the best:

But there are many different server that you can subscribe to with their own policies, you’ll find one that satisfies your needs and expectations, or you can self-host your own instance also.

The huge difference with Twitter is that you can find a server that meets you policy needs, or you can run your instance. Of course some entities will deny some contents others will accept, but that’s completely different to a global censorship.

Find the interesting mastodon instance, this will guide you and help you find the interesting servers. Prefer a small-moderate size than a huge server.

Mastodon also helps you to migrate your user account from a server to another. So you’re not lost alone if you want to change the server.

## Mastodon…hopefully…won’t replace Twitter

There is a trend, many legacy Twitter users seek to create a user account on some Mastdon instances. Some admins must increase the resources of their mastodon servers. But Mastodon must never grow towards vertical silo such as Twitter.

Mastodon in the fediverse network is meant for federation of many many servers, managed by different communities. As such, no global directory of users, no incentive to be the most popular user in the social network.

Mastodon is not designed to replace Twitter, no content managed by algorithms, no ads, no money-profit (bad buzz won’t give you money). Global diffusion is much less efficient, as any mastodon server administrator can filter, block, based on her decision, local site policy. Also, a mastodon server will only interact with other mastodon servers, if a local user follows a user from the remote mastodon server, there is no global broadcasting. All interactions depend on user interactions.

As such, the usual Twitter user won’t meet the same usage, the same icentives. Mastodon, while also carrying good and bad quality posts (toots), as users as real people, won’t empower bad contents in the same way as a global managed communication service. For instance medium-small size mastodon servers will easily block contents/users/servers they disagree with, so viral toots won’t experience the same consequences.

Hopefully, the new users will learn to appreciate better content at a lower pace, without pressure on users, generated by content algorithms. Hopefully, users will have a better understanding of all the benefits from decentralised services.