Awesome Fedi Admin Resources

A collection of awesome resources for running your own federated social media website.

The Fediverse is a network of many different social media servers that communicate with each other using the ActivityPub protocol.

Contents

• General guides
• Hosting
• Storage
• Installation, configuration & scaling
  • Installation
  • Scaling & configuration
• Customization
• Moderation & blocking
  • Basic blocklists
  • Tools
• Legal, financial & governance resources
• Migration & shutdown
• Admin community
• Follow

General guides

• runyourown.social: Darius Kazemi's guide to running a small social network site for your friends.

Hosting

A number of small independent companies offer managed Mastodon hosting, where they take care of technical aspects of installation and updates. You won't have direct server access/control, which may come into play if you want to do advanced customization and configuration.

Prices given are for the lowest tiers.

• Masto.host: Managed hosting for Mastodon ($6 USD/month).
• Fedi Monster: Managed hosting for Mastodon, glitch-soc, and Hometown (€9/month), Pixelfed (€7/month), and GoToSocial (€5/month).
• Spacebear: Managed hosting for Mastodon, Hometown, and Pleroma (€16/month), Pixelfed (€12/month), and PeerTube (€20/month).
• Toot.io: Managed hosting for Mastodon ($24 USD/month).
• Cloudplane: Managed hosting for Mastodon and GoTosocial (€6/month).
• Weingärtner IT Services: Managed hosting for BookWyrm (€11/month), CalcKey (€5/month), Castopod (€7/month), Funkwhale (€7/month), Lemmy (€11/month), Mastodon (€4.50/month), Peertube (€7/month), and Pixelfed (€11/month). EU & Switzerland only.
• Thunderhost: Managed hosting for Mastodon ($15 USD/month).

Other hosts do not manage it for you, but allow easy installation.

• DigitalOcean: starting at $4 USD/month for hosting (but realistically more like $12) and $5/month for storage.

Storage

• Jortage: Cloud storage for fediverse servers.

Installation, configuration & scaling

Installation

• How to install Mastodon + Hometown for absolute n00bs: @mart0@438punk.house's guide to setting up a Hometown server on a Linode VPS, from buying a domain to long-term maintenance.

• Hosting your own Mastodon server: Paul Stamatiou's guide to installing Mastodon on a managed host and on a VPS with a regular web host, as well as migration, regular maintenance, optimization, and scaling.

• "Deploying the Takahē Fediverse Server on Debian 11": @futzle@old.mermaid.town's low-level instructions for setting up the lightweight Fediverse server Takahē on Debian 11.

Scaling & Configuration

• "Scaling Mastodon in the Face of an Exodus": Nora Tindall's recap of how to configure and scale Mastodon to handle a massive user influx.

• "Scaling Mastodon: The Compendium": Hazel Weakly of hachyderm.io's collection of notes and snippets on Mastodon scaling.

• "What does AUTHORIZED_FETCH actually do?": @brook@sunny.garden explains the pros and cons of the features AUTHORIZED_FETCH and Disallow Unauthenticated API Access.

• "Setting up email in Mastodon using an external SMTP server": what it says on the tin, by drakfrid.

Customization

Here are swatches of default Mastodon and Hometown theme colours for testing the appearance of custom emoji. For use in Inkscape, here's an SVG version.

• "Custom Emoji on Mastodon": Laura Kalbag's tips for making and adding custom emoji.

• Mutant Standard: A popular custom emoji set designed by Dzuk. CC BY-NC-SA.

Moderation & blocking

Note: I can't believe I have to write this, but if you have no moderating experience—like, not even a YouTube video's comments section—I would strongly suggest not starting a Fediverse server at all until you have help. Yes, even if you are a tech-savvy, well-meaning white guy. ESPECIALLY if you are a tech-savvy, well-meaning white guy.

• A Guide to Moderating in the Fediverse: The Basics: @packetcat@tenforward.social's explanation of moderation basics like separating personal and admin/mod accounts, proactive vs. reactive moderation, and more.

• Toot.Wales' Content and Account Action Process Manual: A guide for toot.wales moderators, describing content that requires action, actions they can take (deleting, marking media sensitive, etc.), the strike system, etc. There is also a Github repo with more moderator resources.

• Mastodon Moderation Puzzles: @futurebird@sauropods.win's list of hypothetical moderation scenarios. Not so much a test with right or wrong answers as an interesting exploratory exercise for gauging moderation styles.

Basic blocklists

Note: You must have a blocklist in place before accepting members. You should also independently verify that each server is block-worthy, unless you personally trust the person who compiled the blocklist.

The current prevailing blocklist model is consensus-based: importable blocklists are generated based on the combined blocklists of a short list of trusted servers with similar moderation policies. A server must be blocked by a certain number or percentage of trusted servers to be added to the blocklist.

• Weirder.earth's Suggested Instance Blocks: A minimal worst-of-the-worst blocklist that is a good starting point. (Note: At this point rather outdated—some servers have closed, others have cleaned up their act or may be below other people's thresholds of blockworthiness—but useful for historical reference.)

• Ten Forward Instance Suspensions: A solid (~280) blocklist, most with links to the admin's announcement with reasons for blocking.

• Garden Fence: @brook@sunny.garden's basic blocklist, periodically generated based on servers blocked by at least 75% of a small group of trusted servers.

• Oliphant.social Shared Blocklist Files: a more granular set of lists based on different tiers of consensus (60%+, 50%, 33%, etc.), using a nearly identical list of trusted servers.

• Seirdy's Fediverse blocklists: @seirdy@pleroma.envs.net's blocklists, consisting of the pleroma.envs.net blocklist, a smaller subset suitable for servers that have signed on to the Mastodon Covenant, and an even smaller "worst of the worst" subset; based on "bias sources" (trusted servers).

• The Bad Space: Are0h's searchable catalog of block-worthy instances, sourced from a small set of trusted servers with similar moderation policies. Includes importable blocklists based on tiers of consensus, from 20% to 90%.

Blocking & moderation tools

• mastodon-block-tools: ineffyble's extensive collection of tools for importing and syncing blocklists. This includes tools for importing blocklists (from before this feature was added to Mastodon), "subscribing" to other servers' blocklists, and making your own consensus-based blocklist.

Legal, financial & governance resources

• Loomio: A platform for collective decision-making.

• OpenCollective: A fundraising and collective money management platform for grassroots groups.

• "A guide to potential liability pitfalls for people running a Mastodon instance": Denise Paolucci's overview of how to cover your ass, legally (US-specific).

• Notes on operating fediverse services (Mastodon, Pleroma etc) from an English law point of view: Tech lawyer Neil Brown's overview of English laws that likely apply to people running fediverse servers. See also his comments regarding the Online Safety Bill.

• Union.place Privacy Policy: A privacy policy based on the standard Mastodon privacy policy and Dreamwidth's. CC BY-NC-SA.

• Artisan.chat's Disaster Recovery Plan: ArtiChat's "what if our datacentres burn down?"/"what if we get phished?"/"what if the admin gets hit by a beer truck?" worst-case-scenario contingency plans.

• "Towards 'Hit By a Bus' #FediAdmin Best Practices": My (@nev@flipping.rocks') list of what the backup admin has access to, to keep the site running in case of an emergency.

Migration & shutdown

• The Mastodon Server Covenant requires admins notify users at least 3 months in advance before shutting down the server.

• Cybre.space end-of-life announcement: One example of a long-running server announcing its shutdown. The admin gives users 3 months before making the server read-only (so users can log in and manage their accounts, but not post or follow new people), and then at least 1 year before taking the server down completely.

Admin community

• Donate to Mastodon's Patreon to get access to the official development Discord.

• FediAdmin Forum: A community for fediverse instance administrators to connect and network with each other. Aiming to be a one-stop-shop for all things fediverse administration.

I Know Someone running a Discord for like-minded admins, but I don't know if they want it to be public information, so uhhh…if you're an admin, contact me on Mastodon and I'll pass your name along?

Follow

Who else should we be following!?

Contributing

Contributions of any kind welcome, just follow the guidelines!

Contributors

Thanks goes to these contributors!