I’ve just became a member of the fediverse and spun up my own Mastodon server. I’ve used a domain that I snapped up after watching Ted Lasso which I think is highly appropriate for social media: bantr.co.uk.
Now, I should make it clear that you don’t need to run your own server to be part of the Mastodon/fediverse. You can sign up for hundreds, maybe thousands of servers depending on your interest, for example. Many servers cater for a particular subject or interest but join other servers to form a unified network. See joinmastodon.org for more information.
It’s important to note that it hosts only one account at the moment: mine (@[email protected]). Nobody else can sign up for an account (yet) as I have limited resources which I don’t want to abuse. Usage is very low at the moment, and I’m still figuring out the best way of maintaining everything without it blowing up. But so far, so good.
I got back into Mastodon again once I found out that Zuckerberg’s Threads intend to join the fediverse – and what that means is that servers like Threads or mine can all exchange messages together to form one big social media network. But as a server admin, I have additional powers that allows me to block other servers or other users on other servers of interacting with my server or users. Each server operator can set their own rules as to how messages are sent and received.