CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Interesting, the post below is a call for help with creating a federated free open encrypted replacement for Discord!

In case you aren't aware, @cwebber is one of the co-creators of ActivityPub which is the protocol that the Fediverse runs on. @spritely is an organisation run by her that works on next generation federated projects.

Christine Lemmer-Webber (@cwebber@social.coop)

If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026. We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.

social.coop (social.coop)

#Discord #Alternatives #FOSS

@spdrnl

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

@gbargoud @TimothyRoes

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