Encouraging non-technical people and organisations to set up their own online services instead of relying on massive corporations.
All the recommended services are free and open source, and available through managed hosting providers. You can find out more on my website at https://growyourown.services
🚫 Completely opposed to cryptocurrency, "web3", NFTs, blockchain, tokens, defi, daos etc. They are scams.
The idea is to help people who aren't technical create their own online services through managed hosting, where the hosting company does the techy stuff behind the scenes.
Some particular highlights include a beginner's guide to starting your own Mastodon server:
You might think this couldn't happen to you, but it could happen to anyone. It's especially scary as most big tech companies are in repressive countries.
It's much easier and cheaper than you think to make your own online services. I've done a site for non-technical people at https://growyourown.services
Are you frustrated by blank or outdated profiles on Mastodon?
There are two crucial pull requests still waiting for review on Mastodon's Github which would automatically load latest posts to profiles no matter which server you're on:
Do you run your own #PeerTube server? Does it seem a bit empty when it's just your own videos? Would you like other servers' videos to also be browsable and searchable on your own server's website?
You can do this by following other servers or specific accounts/channels on other servers, and it doesn't take up any of your storage space or bandwidth.
This guide tells PeerTube admins how to follow other servers, and has a list of recommended PeerTube servers to follow:
Most public Fediverse servers are running on professional hosting services using business-grade data centres. They are owned and controlled by grassroots admins, but they are on the same kind of hardware as commercial online services.
For some reason there's a misconception floating around that all Fediverse servers run on home machines in a corner of someone's living room. This usually isn't the case. It is possible to do, but most admins don't do this, especially not for public servers.
Something that could make Mastodon safer and more pleasant to use would be reply controls.
This would optionally allow users to specify who can reply to their posts, so that people who experience abusive replies from bigots, trolls etc can pre-emptively prevent that happening.
It would also give people a middle option between follower-only posts and public posts.
Mastodon's moderation could be greatly improved by a system to automatically flag posts containing certain words, phrases or links.
It would allow admins to instantly see problematic content (abuse, spam, etc) without having to wait for reports from users. It doesn't have to automatically take action, just flag it.
The idea is to help people who aren't technical create their own online services through managed hosting, where the hosting company does the techy stuff behind the scenes.
Some particular highlights include a beginner's guide to starting your own Mastodon server:
Grow Your Own Services 🌱
