A lot has happened since I published my article on the open source decentralized social networking service Mastodon a few weeks ago. I saw a lot of interest in and discourse around that post that was great to see. Since then, a few notable things have happened that have caused Mastodon usage to spike yet again.

Twitter unsurprisingly ended up entirely banning third-party Twitter clients, including hugely popular ones like Tweetbot and Twitterific. I briefly summarized the ebb and flow of being a developer working with the Twitter API in the last post:

"Long story short, Twitter made it hard. Hard to even get an API key and get your app approved. Hard to get bugs fixed or new features accessible via the API. Hard to access the data developers wanted. Hard to not hit arbitrary constraints or limits. Things were always changing, rugs were pulled, announcements about new priorities and new rugs were made, only for them to be pulled again (read this, this and this)".

Well, the final rug was pulled. Fortunately, there was a bit of a silver lining. The folks at Tapbots were able to launch their lovely Mastodon app Ivory. The launch went so well that a flood of people took that as an opportunity to take a closer look at Mastodon and join. Mastodon has grown from 500,000 active users last year to now being almost at 10 million.

Mastodon just keeps getting better. There's more authentic conversations and far less linkbait and thread spam from influencers. It feels like a place I'd prefer spending more of my time to catch up on things.

With my interest in Mastodon, I recently decided I wanted to take the next step and host my own Mastodon server for my account: @stammy@stammy.design. In my previous post about Mastodon I provided some details about different routes you could take to self-host Mastodon. Today, I'll show you how you can host your own Mastodon instance, step-by-step.

So you want to host your own Mastodon server?

And why you would want to do host your own Mastodon server? If you've read this far, you probably already have a hunch or two as to why, but here are a few excuses to choose from:

• You value being in complete control over your Mastodon identity, data, and privacy. You don't want to risk it on an instance where you don't know the moderators, don't want to be under their control, or simply don't trust them to maintain the server long-term.

• You want a speedy Mastodon experience. By controlling your own instance you can set it up with the appropriate resources and hosting location near you to keep Mastodon feeling speedy at all times. That's not the case with various instances, especially the larger ones experiencing rapid growth.

• You want a weekend project, because Mastodon is open source and able to be self-hosted

• You see lots of people running their own instance and it seems cool.

• You want a better Mastodon user name, one that speaks more to your identity or interests. Run Mastodon on your long-time domain name or an entirely new one, paired with whatever user name you like.

2023-01-05T16:00:00Z 2023-01-05T16:00:00+00:00 https://paulstamatiou.com/mastodon

A Mastodon app called Ivory

I first wrote about Twitter (née twttr) just over 16 years ago. Over the years, Twitter’s place and impact in the world has become clear. It’s not just a place to hear about breaking news, keep up with celebrities or see what your politicians are saying. It’s a place where communities are formed and thrive. It is the global town square.

But that’s all been changing daily ever since Elon Musk took over. This has become the tipping point for many to reconsider their reliance on big tech companies with closed platforms and to be in control of their data. This whole Twitter/Elon saga sucks, but maybe it’s just the kick we needed.

And with that, I’m starting to spend more time on Mastodon, and I’ll tell you why. Follow me on Mastodon: @stammy@stammy.design (you’ll have to search for it on your Mastodon server).

Part 2: Hosting your own Mastodon server

Want to have complete control and host your own Mastodon server?

Shortly after I wrote this post, I loved Mastodon so much I decided to host my own server and document the process for those that would want to do the same. In Hosting your own Mastodon server I show two ways to host your own server (using a fully-managed Mastodon host, and using a VPS provider). I go into everything from scripts to backup your database and run media clean up tasks, to advanced settings to optimize your server, and much more.

Twitter quickly became a core part of how I used the internet, made friends, learned things, kept up with the world, killed time, and so much more. I eventually went to work at Twitter for nine years. Twitter, the company, had lots of ups and downs, but the people behind it cared so much about the platform and its place in the world. It’s the critical conversational layer of the internet. Creators have active social media accounts elsewhere online, but they always relied on Twitter to truly connect and have conversations with their community. It was the vital hub.

Well, it’s a different bird site now. I don’t intend to summarize the series of events and drama that have unfolded ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, nor do I have the energy for that, but if you’ve seen even a portion of all the headlines, you get where I’m coming from.

Seeing the company's culture get slaughtered so quickly was hard. It was a culture woven around caring for coworkers, caring for people that used Twitter, and caring about the good of the service.

A few weeks ago was the last straw for me. Reputable accounts were randomly banned, and Twitter announced that people could no longer Tweet links to other social networks that were deemed competitive. Then more people were banned for saying they were leaving. And then, suddenly, this big policy suddenly vanished.

I lost a lot of hope and confidence in Twitter and how it is being run. I still think Twitter will be around for some time, but I’m not sure how much I want to continue investing in it as much as I used to.

I had seen some folks migrating away to alternate services in recent months but didn’t think much of it. Twitter was here to stay, right?

Fool me once...

The Twitter/Elon saga has a silver lining that I can appreciate. It shows us that we’ve all become too comfortable with just a few large tech companies amassing our info, controlling our data, and what we do with it.

2022-08-06T16:00:00Z 2022-08-06T16:00:00+00:00 https://paulstamatiou.com/revisiting-the-apple-ipod

1,000 songs in your pocket.

You’ve probably heard that iconic marketing slogan before even if you never had an original iPod. Apple referred to the iPod as a "breakthrough digital device" when they announced it. The first iPod came at a time when the portable audio player landscape was.. nomadic (pun intended) at best.

MP3 players were already around when the iPod came out in 2001. Sales of early MP3 players were growing but they all had key limitations. You had to choose whether you wanted a smaller, flash memory player with extremely limited storage or a larger hard-drive based player.

Various portable MP3 and MP3 CD players in the early 2000s. Few were usable with just one hand on the go.

None of them were easy to use or elegant. They were often cluttered with buttons, had subpar software and were hard to navigate. There were also other options like MP3 CD Players and Sony MiniDisc players (I loved my MZ-R70).

The iPod was different. It was a sleek, shiny stainless steel and white device the size of a deck of cards. Its stellar industrial design turned heads. This was not just an audio player you used to play music. It said something about you the same way using a Mac vs a PC said something about you at the time. You were different; maybe a creative even. You valued well-crafted products.