I switched to Mastodon about a year or so ago. I fully agree with the grandparent post in that the atmosphere is very different compared to the major social media platforms.

As you allude to, discovery is harder since you don't have an algorithm pointing you in the direction of content you're likely to engage with (yes, engage with, and not necessarily enjoy) but once you have found the right people to follow, it's more rewarding because it's your community, not owned by a single corporate entity.

Although I didn't use G+ much in the later days, its closure showed my how irresponsible it is to rely on proprietary platforms. I'm committed to never be active on a proprietary, closed social media platform again.

My main account is here: https://functional.cafe/@loke

> I'm committed to never be active on a proprietary, closed social media platform again.

Including HN?

That's a good point. Clearly I still use this platform, but I do see a difference between them.

I don't “post” on Hacker News. I do comment, but I don't think anyone who are interested in following whatever it is that I may have to say would come here to look up my posts.

Or, to put it in another way, if this place would introduce some social media features, such as the ability to follow people and post to followers, then it is highly unlikely that I would be interested in using those features.

I don’t think OP meant “proprietary, closed” as “centralized”. If it’s about the code: https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

I referred to both, actually. It's about whether I own my own presence on the network.

Of course, I'm not hosting my own server, so I am in some way in the hands of its administrator, just like I was in the hands of Google when I used G+. However, I can talk to him directly, which is a huge benefit. Also, if he decides to shut down the server, I can still join a different instance and reconnect with all the people I was following on the old server.

What has your experience been with self-hosting?

I'd love to self-host a Mastodon instance that two-way mirrors my Twitter account and acts as a Twitter client (letting me pseudo-follow folks from Twitter). But in any case, I'd want to ensure that no content from people I follow gets mirrored/hosted on my own instance; the only content actually hosted on my own instance should be the content I post.

I've had a pretty good experience self-hosting with Pleroma. Its quite amazing that I can run a social media server with just a $5 VPS.

Not sure if there are bots / apps that can easily let you follow Twitter users on Mastodon, but I've definitely seen mastodon - twitter crossposter apps before.

What do you mean? No content other than what your users generate will be hosted on your instance.

There is a concept of a federated timeline, which does get synced to your local instance. If you follow someone on a remote instance, that instance feeds content into your instance so it can be loaded.

It syncs the people you follow, right? So presumably the only additional content on your instance is content from the people you follow, which should generally be low-risk.

You can also block just media if an instance is known to host images that are illegal in your country or your users don't want to see (silencing is a better option for the latter tho).

I believe once you follow someone, you become federated with their instance. and you potentially receive all content from that instance... I think?

there are also admin controls for managing moderation and federation.

I still don't want to host anyone else's content, for much the same reason I'm never going to have an unmoderated comment system on a site.

I run my own instance too: @[email protected]

I also made a guide for making your own Mastodon CSS:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/using-custom-css-with-mastodo...

Yeah, I self-hosted my own instance of Pleroma for a while, but eventually switched to a more popular instance with people who have similar interests as me (art + religion (specifically, rediscovering religion after rage-quitting Christianity @social.theliturgists.com)

I'm https://takeoverthe.world/@caff :) Self-hosting Mastodon has been an adventure, for sure. However, relays have definitely helped with federation. :)

I literally haven't actually posted or done anything on it...

https://mastodon.technology/@tracker1

I've thought about putting one up for social.bbs.io or bbs.land

mine is: https://mastodon.social/@yogthos

Mine is: https://mastodon.social/@sei