Getting a new shared Mastodon instance going is a lot of work! I've put in a lot of hours the past couple days on getting ZCMI.social off the ground. It's not just the technical side of things with domain, hosting, and administration – there is a lot more to it.

It's been a whirlwind weekend, but I somehow started a new Mastodon instance! ZCMI.social is now a thing.

Occasionally over the past couple years, I've thought about starting a Mastodon instance for members of my church – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

May 2025 update: I have since moved on and have not had an account on Fosstodon for a couple years now.

Back in January I wrote Why I Use Librem Social. Librem Social is a social media network that is based on a fork of Mastodon. About a month after I wrote that, I decided to migrate to a different instance. Fosstodon is where I landed and I've quite enjoyed my experience there.

I recently read an excellent article by Shannon Valor: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

She starts by sharing an experience she had where she was scrolling through her Twitter feed, but soon realizes she is feeling a heaviness in the pit of her stomach and not having a good time.

I've been using Mastodon – a free and open source, decentralized social media platform and a compelling alternative to corporate-controlled platforms like Facebook and Twitter – regularly since June of 2019. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse – a collection of inter-connected apps developed around ActivityPub, an open, decentralized social networking protocol.