2024-03-09

Here's the thing. Lately, Mastodon seems to be focused on optimizations for large servers, and adding trend/recommendation features, making it clear they either don't understand, or don't value, the things that (at least in my opinion!) meaningfully set the fediverse apart, when compared to the corporate social networks.

GoToSocial, on the other hand, seems to be prioritizing the things that embody the best version of the fediverse, such as: being able to run a server on low-spec hardware, giving people better control over their visibility and interactions, and sticking with a strictly chronological feed. That last one - a firm commitment to a non-algorithmic timeline - is crucial. The alternative is to add a layer of mediation between you and your contacts, effectively creating a system that people can try to game.

GTS is still in alpha, so naturally some features haven't been fully implemented yet. One of those is account migration - but it's apparently getting close. So, eagerly anticipating that major milestone, I tossed a few bucks toward a cheap VPS running Debian 12 and started going through the setup.

(Side note: I haven't gotten into Docker yet, and in theory I guess this could have been my excuse to learn the basics, however I ended up going with the bare metal installation, so I can't really comment on the Docker version.)

The GTS docs are *very* detailed, and for the most part are easy enough for a novice like me to follow. If you're doing a default setup - i.e., you have a single board computer or vps that's only going to be serving GTS - then I reckon you should be able to get up and running without much hassle, assuming you have at least a basic familiarity with the Linux terminal, and how to do stuff like forward ports on your router.

My setup is a little different - I'll eventually be running GTS on the same machine as this site and some other services - so I had to change a few settings from the defaults, but nothing major. Once again, the docs had me covered.

-- Allowlist/denylist importing is well thought-out, and even accepts a plaintext file. The option to either append to *or replace* your existing denylist is already a huge upgrade over Mastodon. GoToSocial doesn't seem to have a 'limit server' setting yet, though.

-- Good default settings, e.g. manually approve follows & sign-ups; cache cleanup is enabled out of the box.

-- Can't believe I hadn't thought of a 'mutuals-only' post visibility setting. It's one of those ideas that seems entirely obvious the moment you hear it. I just need to figure out which client(s) display it as an option!

-- Some clever configuration options here, such as the ability to require image descriptions that are >=x characters in length. I can understand why they might have chosen to leave the default at 0, but honestly, this is something that would be great for the broader fediverse to adopt.

-- The server info webpage actually includes useful information for prospective signups, such as, the character limit on posts.

Sorry, gonna take a potshot at mainline Mastodon here:

The stubborn refusal to allow instances to set the character limit on posts is unbelievably narrow-minded, and limits the potential for constructive, nuanced discussion. On the plus side though, it creates a good incentive for people to move off mastodon.social, so,

Anyway, overall I'm pretty psyched about GoToSocial, and I'm looking forward to migrating.

the meantime

Before I do, though, there's a really important thing I need to have sorted out. Which is, I need to learn how to automate backups. This was also one of my main early struggles with Mastodon, but eventually I figured out how to write a shell script to do it.

With GTS, there's actually a built-in backup method, however it only creates a 'bare-minimum' backup, which doesn't include local accounts' statuses, media, bookmarks, etc. Plus, there doesn't seem to be a separate 'local users' storage, so it's not simply a matter of running 'scp -r' a couple times a week.

I guess the flipside of that coin is, it's an opportunity to learn a few more things, and it should keep me busy for a little bit, while we wait for the next release. And hey, maybe if I settle on a method, I'll post a tutorial :)

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