I'm pulling the veil off of toots.matapacos.dog, intended to be an unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance. It is a more-or-less standard Mastodon installation, however I modified the nginx configuration to omit IP addresses from the access log and put bogus information into the X-Real-IP and X-Forwarded-For headers (because Mastodon records IPs for the moderation panel and session tracking features).

Upon setting up the instance, I discovered a couple things. First of all, it appears only new activity gets federated. If you follow an account on a different instance, you will need to follow a link to that instance to see posts made before federation was established. This issue is being worked on, but that is the present situation. Second, the federated timeline appears to only show accounts which are followed by users of the local instance.

In short, the timeline is very barren, and it will take users posting as well as following active accounts from other instances to make it more vibrant. Discoverability of users on other instances is particularly poor until this initial bootstrapping phase can be overcome.

Anybody who would like to try it out anyway is welcome to join. If anybody wants to be deputized as a janitor for whatever reason, I will verify your identity on here. If anybody has already settled in to Mastodon, feel free to share your handles (if you want) so we can exchange follows and start getting linked into the network. Also feel free to recommend cool accounts.

      • spectre [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        unironically that's one of the biggest appeals to me

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      ·
      2 years ago

      every url used to be like www.cs.dept.fku.edu/~njrobinson/page/index.htm and then everything became like premium.grundlclick.com/articles/peenix.asp?id=S0Yl3Z7&G23El\l&hs=15-p30673 so honestly i think this new phase is an improvement

  • plinky [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Dunno about those twitter thingies, but cute picture :meow-fiesta:

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Well folks, the timeline is looking pretty good now. With just 14 local users and help from the folks who were already established on Mastodon, the instance has managed to discover over 400 other instances. Meeting a bunch of randos. Nice work! Couldn't have done it without you.

    The bad news is I will need to expand the disk storage within two weeks days :che-smile:

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I will start shilling patreon or something if it comes to it, but the expenses are more or less negligible for the moment. Less than an hour's wages per month.

        Of course, under communism I would have to pay nothing. I'd just have to pull a defunct laptop out of the closet and plug it into my modem.

  • Questionsleep [des/pair]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I don’t understand how mastodon works and at this point I’m too afraid to ask. Maybe it’s best for my :sicko-luna: brain and my overall mental health if I don’t know how to get the latest and greatest internet slop

    • LiberalSocialist [any,they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I've also had trouble understanding Mastodon. The biggest problem is trying to find other, cool and like-minded people. That's why I'm so excited for this one!

      All you gotta do at the moment is create an account (will require email) and follow the people who've commented their IDs in this post. That's it. You have a Home tab where all the "tweets" (called toots on mastodon) will show up, along with replies. You can retweet (aka boost), like, favorite, reply etc.

      Give it a try!

    • pooh [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Just put this on my other comment, but this account has a lot of good tips for learning the platform: https://mstdn.social/@feditips

  • pooh [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    pooh@eattra.sh is my handle. I'll try to see if I can find some good accounts to recommend here.

    EDIT: This is a great account for new users to follow for tips on how to use the platform: https://mstdn.social/@feditips

  • iridaniotter [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I believe you can add custom emotes to mastodon instances by the way. :putin-wink:

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    pretty cool, was going to sign-up but the required email is a bit troublesome (could it be optional like hexbear?)

    if not, I'll jump thru the hoop when I've got some time

    • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I don't think there is any way to make it optional, but I'll take a look through the manual just to be sure.

      Edit: Doesn't seem so, but if you use a temporary email service to sign up, you shouldn't need the email address ever again unless you forget your password or want to update the email address without admin intervention (you will need to remember it or write it down to log in though).

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I managed to import nearly every Hexbear emote to the Mastodon instance. :sicko-crowd: A couple of the longer gifs were too big.

  • drhead [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Me: @drhead@pettingzoo.co

    As far as recommendations go I'd recommend @pisscotheque@godforsaken.website and @chadloder@kolektiva.social for starters.