A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings

The second encounter of the series will be hosted by LURK at VARIA, Rotterdam, entitled "How to run a small social networking site with your friends".

Whether it is because of online surveillance, doomscrolling, curiosity, the toxic dynamics, the lack of reach, the risk of accounts being removed, the desire for self-governance, etc, there have been multiple reasons to explain why the past years have seen a renewed interest in alternative social media platforms. New federated networked applications and protocols have been developed in tandem to provide similar services as platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. In particular, the free software Mastodon, has gained traction among small communities of practice interested in experimenting with social media under their own control, as it allows them to decide how to run it, why, and for whom. These self-organized spaces however can still be part of a larger network, called the Fediverse.

*However*, while installing such a software is not necessarily the most obvious thing to do, the real challenge only starts *after the installation*, when the software is up and running and all your friends, colleagues, peers, guests, are starting to make use of it.

What does it take to run a Mastodon instance? How does online federation work? What are the politics of the Fediverse? What does it take to moderate an instance? We will try to cover it all, from writing terms and code of conduct, to dealing with account reports or problematic users. But also, how to financially sustain your work? What are ways to make it fun and specific to you? What are further opportunities and threats when doing this?

Enrollment is no longer possible - announcement for information purposes