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Fedi admins with open sign-ups,
There are scammers active at the moment, and all of the scammer accounts have signed up on servers with instant signups.
To put the scammers off signing up on your server, you might want to set your sign-ups to "approval required".
To do this on Mastodon go to Preferences > Administration > Server Settings > Registrations tab > Who can sign up > Approval required, then click save changes.
There's a new project called Holos which makes it a lot easier to host a Fediverse server on your own mobile device. You can follow the project at:
The official site explains how it works:
️ https://holos.social/how-it-works
To manage expectations, it's still in its early days and mainly for techy people at the moment. However, it will be interesting to follow its development 
Holos is by the makers of the Mastodon/Fediverse mobile app Fedilab.
@flancian @gbargoud @TimothyRoes
I don't think it is accurate to say "no" because that implies you have to start from scratch on a totally new account with zero followers.
The Fediverse is the only place you can move from one independent infrastructure to another while keeping your followers and follows. There's nowhere else that lets you do this, and I think it deserves to be highlighted instead of hidden or downplayed.
Yup, I should have been clearer: it's cheap to start is my point
If you run a public instance and grow then yes the costs do go up (though the costs-per-user go substantially down).
Also a lot of people still think you need to buy an actual physical server or data centre and spend thousands setting it up, and that's definitely not the case.
This article is mainly aimed at non-technical people using managed hosting
Also the signup changes are just for the default suggestion, they're not changing how the full official listing is compiled. It also doesn't affect servers not on the list or on alternative lists such as https://fedi.garden
Yes you can move your existing account: https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/
And yup, the fetch all replies thing since Mastodon 4.5 makes life much easier for smaller servers. Every reply for every thread is fetched, no matter how small your server is. (Of course moderation blocks in either direction would override the fetching.)
I've tried to put together ways of getting more of the Fedi visible on your server at https://fedi.tips/using-relays-to-quickly-expand-a-servers-view-of-the-fediverse
It's much easier and cheaper than you think to start your own Mastodon server:
- You don't need to be a tech nerd and you don't need any hardware. You can use a "managed hosting" service which does all the hosting and techy stuff for you behind the scenes.
- You don't need to be rich, managed hosting starts from around 5 to 10 euros per month including everything.
I've done a non-technical step-by-step guide to creating your own Mastodon server at:
https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps
