this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Mastodon

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Decentralised and open source social network.

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Hi, i'm curious if any of you have any experiences setting up and using a Mastodon instance for your family/social circle only?

I'm thinking it could provide an experience like the early Facebook, where you saw posts from people you actually cared about. And not just a bunch of ads disguised as content.

If you have experience with it, how did you convince your family to move over to the server? Does it get used and are there any unforeseen complications you hadn't expected?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I think Matrix or another (self-) hostable mesenger (or even a Signal group) would be better for this since it can and should be encrypted. I don't really see a use for something public when you want it to be family/friends only. And with Masto it's very probable that everything your family posts will be gobbled up be secret services, AI companies, Google/Meta etc. Encrypted Matrix would be private and afaik aware, there are no features Masto has that Matrix doesn't (can post images, text, video, reactions etc).

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

Thanks for your input :)!