Recently, I was inspired to set up my own Fediverse node. I was inspired by this post https://blog.elenarossini.com/gotosocial-empowers-you-to-have-your-own-home-on-the-fediverse-with-unique-controls/. You should definitely go check it out.

I think the thing that got me most was the enthusiasm. The idea that things can be better if we just work on making them better. This permeates the Fediverse and indie-web, and I’m all for it. We need desperately optimism right now, both techno and otherwise.

The stack

I decided, for simplicity’s sake, to use the same tech stack that Elena laid out in her post. This gave me a nice benchmark to measure against (how fast can I do it vs her (spoilers: much slower)), as well as a general list of tools that should all work well together. I ended up with the following:

• GoToSocial (Backend)
• Elk.zone (Web interface)
• Phanpy (Web Interface)
• Fedilab (Android)
• Moshidon (Android)

Installing GoToSocial

I have my own server that I run most of my tools on already set up, so this part I expected to be easy. All in all it wasn’t crazy, but did take two evenings just due to family/life. I set up the container inside of Unraid and aside from a permissions issue, I mostly copied was was in their existing docker compose tweaking as necessary. The end result, in the Unraid user interface, looks like this:

Overall, as I mentioned it’s pretty much what’s in the docker compose with the following tweaks:

GTS_TRUSTED_PROXIES: This is set to the default docker ip range since I’m running everything behind a reverse proxy.

GTS_ADVANCED_RATE_LIMIT_EXCEPTIONS: This one was a little bit tricky to figure out, since that’s not even the standard ip range for my network. Eventually I found a helpful write-up in the GoToSocial documentation (https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/configuration/trusted_proxies/) which let me identify what the issue was and how to address it.

Logging in

Setting up the user is done on the command line and is pretty straightforward, so once I’d done that it was time to log in. I went to Elk.zone, pointed it to my instance, and was able to log in and make a post! All in all it was pretty simple to do this. Next up, finding other people to follow! Let’s hit the explore tab:

Hmmm, that’s odd. A bit of googling and searching the github issues didn’t turn anything up. Searching was likewise non-functional. I pulled up the handle for a few folks I know have a Fediverse account and come up empty.

Maybe we should try Phanpy?

Well now that’s just weird. But searching seems to work here at least. I know, I should check the logs! Maybe that will give me an idea of what’s going on.

Where the trouble begins

Okay, so let’s look at the logs:

Hmm, 404 on that endpoint huh? Let’s take a look:

Oh, I guess GoToSocial doesn’t support that endpoint. Is it outdated?

No, it’s in the official Mastodon API list. I guess this just means it’s not yet been implemented by GoToSocial. Looking at it though, GoToSocial is still in beta so this isn’t unreasonable.

Well, I guess this just means that I’ll have a mishmash of supported features (Elk.zone is in alpha, so I should expect it there as well). Maybe I’ll get better functionality on my mobile clients.

Android clients

So the most robust one appears to be Fedilab, let’s give that a shot. I pop it open, point it to my instance, and wait. And wait. And wait. And about 30% of the time, when I refresh, I’ll be popped into the login page. Score! I log in and… I’m booted back to the “Choose an instance” landing page. What the heck? I check back at the logs for GoToSocial, and it’s just a slew of errors. I don’t dig in here to see which side is at fault, because I have an alternative: Moshidon.

I open Moshidon and am able to log in with absolutely no fuss. Huzzah. I instantly see my test post. Great. Searching is… bad. I mean, it works if I already have the fully qualified name (including instance) of who I’m looking for, but searching tags etc just turns up nothing. This is likely due to the fact that I’ve not added any relay, but honestly I feel like even without a relay I should be able to go OUT of my instance to try to find stuff. All in all, aside from searching/explore it works like I’d expect.

The verdict

First let me say that this is not meant to speak badly of any of the software I used. All of it works as well as could be expected for alpha/beta software (much better I’d say), and I got most of what I was after.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what I’ll use this Mastodon instance for. I wasn’t a big twitter person, so I don’t have a network to regrow or any habits to fall back on. I looked up a few folks I thought I’d be interested in following (@pluralistic@mamot.fr and @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io, you should follow them if you don’t!). Unfortunately, there’s no real benefit because it looks like everything they post to Mastodon, they also post to their site’s RSS feed that I’m already subscribed to. I’m big on RSS (Should probably write about my setup because I’m very happy with it), so this didn’t seem to give me much. I also don’t have any personal friends that I know are in the Fediverse, so I don’t have anyone there to follow either.

I’m going to keep things up and keep the same stack for now, but honestly it was a decent chunk of work for very little benefit (for me personally). If you don’t use RSS (and you should, https://doctorow.medium.com/you-should-be-using-an-rss-reader-76aed31151f9), maybe it’s more benefitial. Or perhaps you have a social circle like you had on twitter. For me I mostly have an empty feed because I don’t want to double up with the folks I already follow via RSS.

The ugly

All of that aside, I think Dhole Moments said it best here: https://soatok.blog/2024/11/19/some-thoughts-on-the-twitter-mass-exodus/

Even though I’m quite happy on the Fediverse, I think the best outcome is for Bluesky to “win” the popularity contest today.

All in all, I do not think that the Fediverse, at least as I’ve interacted with it, is ready for a major influx of non-technical folks. There are definitely ways that it can happen and go well, but I think ultimately everything is still just a little undercooked and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. If a given instance can just choose not to implement features (either through being in beta or just not wanting to have it on their instance, which is valid), it’s going to result in a confusing interface for anyone looking for something that just works. If connecting with folks and simplicity are the goals, I don’t see how at present the Fediverse can stand up against something like Bluesky.

That said, I do believe in the Fediverse. I don’t think it matters if it’s not the place for everyone. There can be places just for weirdo tech-nerds, just like there’s always been. I do, however, believe that we can’t consign the rest of the world to the hellscape that is modern corporate platforms. Bluesky is ALMOST there, but their lack of decentralization holds them back. Thankfully very smart people are working on solving this problem (https://freeourfeeds.com/).

Ultimately this was a fun project to knock out in an evening, and gave me insight into Mastodon/The Fediverse that I’d not yet taken the time to get yet. There are lots of great tools out there and you can quickly stand them up and have things chugging along. If you don’t want to do that, you can join an existing instance or just hop on to Bluesky.