Ok time for some updates. So I have been putting off maintenance of my personal Mastodon instance, and instead relying on another server for my main account, which just feels wrong for a decentralized social network. I’ll need to write up a separate article about my struggles with
So I started to look around for a server that’s a little more lightweight management-wise, as I just host myself (and a few bots), and after some search I found GotoSocial. GotoSocial (abbreviated GTS) is much like Mastodon in that it is also a Federated Activitypub server implementation, and thus compatible with Mastodon servers, but has much smaller resource requirements. It can run on a single board computer with 1GB of RAM, and does not even need its own database – it can be configured to use a SQLite flat file for all its storage!
There is fantastic documentation about getting GTS up and running, but the basic steps are:
- Download the most recent binary release (or compile it if you want)
- Extract to a directory
- Create the gotosocial user (or whatever you like)
- Edit the (very well documented) config.yaml – most defaults are good
- Add a config to Apache/Nginx for the server (hardest part)
- Add your first user account
- Pick and install a frontend** (web, mobile or what have you), log in and start enjoying!
A fantastic server, but no default web front-end
Ok, the last bullet is definitely unique to GotoSocial, and something you need to get used to: there is no built-in web client. You have to find something something you like and set that up. But this is Open Source software! You don’t need to use the default Mastodon web interface, even if you are on a Mastodon server!
The GotoSocial web server does host a useful page at /settings where you can log into the server, set up your profile information, set your default post privacy (why would you set up a social network for yourself and not make your default post privacy as public? The default indeed is private) and do any pending administrative tasks, e.g. blocking any unruly peer domains.
Anyway, if you haven’t investigated Fediverse clients yet and just use the default, you definitely should! Here is a great page listing several clients which work very well with both Mastodon and GotoSocial. I highly recommend checking some of the web frontends out, as they often have publicly hosted instances that you can just log into your own home instance to try it out, before you decide whether to install it on your web server. The web client I’ve enjoyed using the most so far has to be Phanpy.
The Phanpy web client
Phanpy describes itself as an opinionated fediverse client. Well whatever they are doing, I love it. The interface is super slick, uses dark mode by default, and has very customizable columns.
I really cannot say enough good things about this client. There are a few bugs and limitations, but I believe they are both specific to GTS and to my server , as I’ve tried to re-use the same name for several different instances. The main issues I’ve encountered is that setting up a column to follow hashtags doesn’t work on my local server, nor if I pick the federated timeline. Hence in the picture below, you’ll see my columns are set to search for hashtags on the mastodon.world instance. But this also speaks to how good Phanpy is that they allow you to do this so easily! And you can edit them after the fact, re-order them, etc, it’s great.
Non-web clients (Android, iOS, etc)
Obviously Android clients like Tusky or the regular ol’ Mastodon app works well with GotoSocial, and I assume the vaunted Ivory client on iOS works with GTS as well. If you have tried Ivory with a GTS instance and have a report on its compatibility, please do let me know!
General Fediverse anxiety – its weakness is absolutely also a strength
I’ll probably write up a dedicated post about this, but again at least as far as my first implementation has gone, discoverability still hurts many Fediverse implementations. Trending hashtags looks fairly solid, but I think the best way to make Mastodon and GTS a useful experience is to go out and actively search out hashtags, and do not expect to be fed suggested posts or profiles to follow.
If there’s one thing that bugs me about the new rising star of social media, namely Bluesky, its that you really have to go out of your way to stop seeing certain things that get really repetitive. After seeing the hundredth anti-Trump/Elon/Tesla post in a day that, regardless of how I feel about these things, I just got frustrated and had to set up keyword blocks just to try and see more varied posts. But because so much of social media is pictures and memes, and so many people constantly re-post the same stuff, often with the super intellectual content of “THIS! 💯” as their entire message, you still end up seeing it anyway.
I do still think the Fediverse is the best option for folks who want to dip into social media and want lots of flexibility, and are willing to seek out topics without having the experience take over their lives. The fact that you can run your own server and get to back up your data, not to mention moving instances fairly easily is really a great bonus, but I don’t know how many people care these days about it, unfortunate though it is.
