As centralised social media platforms become more and more hostile, with not only toxicity from undesirable elements but also massive privacy concerns, the Fediverse has become somewhat of a refuge for those who want to share freely and openly, without the worry of appeasing the almighty algorithms.

There are some fantastic Mastodon issues for you to join, but what if you want a bit more control, or want to build your own community, or represent your brand? You could setup your own server, assuming you have the skills and patience to do so, or you could take advantage of a service like Masto.host.

Our guest, Hugo, provides what he describes as 'Shared Hosting for Mastodon' at incredibly affordable prices and with some much appreciated transparency on infrastructure and update policies.

We talk about how things got started, his encounter with TERFs and the freedom to refuse service to anyone because of the decentralised nature of the fediverse. We also do a bit of a deep dive into the infrastructure setup for Masto.host and the measures Hugo has put in place in the aim to give everyone a great experience.

Do you have your own instance, or maybe have some stories to share of instances gone wrong? We'd love to hear from you, so please send us a note to podcast@crossedwires.net, or why not come join the discussion on our Discord server.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

"Don't you people backup? I backup, and I don't even know what backing up means!" - Nicola Murray, Secretary of State for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship

If you have any kind of file that's important to you, be that a treasured family photo, your latest research paper, or just the list of the co-ordinates of your best places in Minecraft, you'll want to make sure it's kept safe, right? Well, just syncing that to the cloud isn't really enough, you need a proper backup strategy too.

Part of a good backup strategy is having a backup that isn't in the same place as your computer, and this is where a good cloud backup service is so important. Our friends at Backblaze provide simple, reliable, and affordable backup options for your Mac or Windows PCs for just $9/month. You can get a 15 day free-trial when you follow this link to sign up.

• Masto.host - Hugo's Mastodon hosting service
• Masto.host@mastodon.social - Masto.host on Mastodon
• Infrastructure | Masto.host - Details of how the Masto.host infrastructure works, as Hugo describes in the episode.
• Mastodon - Into the Fediverse - Our chat with James Smith of Mastodon.me.uk
• Mastodon on GitHub

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:05:57: Shared Hosting for Madtodon
3. 00:11:26: Ditching Twitter
4. 00:14:43: Turfing out TERFs
5. 00:22:21: Why Have Your Own Instance?
6. 00:33:59: Infrastructure
7. 00:50:07: Masto.host Pros & Cons
8. 00:58:50: Wrapping Up

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW