It’s been exactly one year since I joined to the Fediverse. Let me tell you my Fediverse story. It does not fit in 500 characters, but glad I have 10000 here.

It first started with Musk tweeting about the sink. I had already given up on Twitter couple of years prior this, but that was the final straw. I saw people talking about Mastodon and I was skeptical. First I looked at mastodon.social, but quickly noticed the username rolle is taken. "That’s it, then", I angrily tweeted that I do not want to join with another nickname, I’m rolle eveywhere AND THE NICK IS TAKEN. Someone immediately pointed out that I should join another instance. An instance, what's that, huh? I then joined to a Finnish instance mastodontti.fi and quickly learned no English is allowed. A moderator pointed out that I should remove my post. Again, I angrily tweeted THAT'S IT THEN, MASTODON SUCKS, STUPID RULES. Another user politely explained that each instance has their own rules, why don't you create another account. An instance, huh?

I quickly learned about the nature of the service. I vaguely remember favoriting tootsuite/mastodon back in 2017 and thought it was just a forum-kinda software back then, for one small community. I consider myself quite witty but I didn't realize Mastodon servers are interconnected. So I joined mstdn.social. And how fun was that! I was elated! My head exploded when I realized how active it was and how amazing the community is.

But then the sudden influx of users made mstdn.social slow and unresponsive. I was thinking about building my own instance, after all I'm a server guy. During 5th of November, 2022, I got my instance up and running, #MementoMoriSocial was born: https://mementomori.social/@rolle/109293139965069879

I wanted my instance to be well federated and active from the start. I followed everyone, I still do. I use a dozen active relays. I managed to finance the instance through my company and get a bit more powerful hardware than necessary. I was alone on my instance first, then invited my wife, colleague and my company.

What I liked in the Fediverse is that I can build my own tools, I own my data and I can help making things better. I have contributed to things via form of:

- #MastodonBirdUI
- #MastoAdmin
- #FediOnFire
- an idea about #Mastopoet
- #TheMastodonList
- #MastodonLista
- and some other things that have been affecting in the general development of Mastodon.

I'm very pleased I can have fun and make my own things while other people like it as well. I first thought all this would be a huge cause of mental stress but it's been on the contrary.

After a couple of months of successful running I opened my instance to the world. Now there's about 150 active users from companies to regular folk and everything has been running smoothly. I have been able to moderate because I require a reason for joining to my instance, so I really do know who the people are. I also welcome each user personally. I know my shit thoroughly and completely. This is why it has been easy to moderate. I've been able to be mostly absent during regular week days from 8am to 6pm, but still be aware of what's happening via effective monitoring, good apps and infrastructure.

For me the key thing is to optimize everything to the tooth. I also regulate my own social media usage, because I get too easily hooked. Mastodon and all its tools have taken an enormous amount of time, but it's been really fun, didn't even notice a full year has passed.

As for the Finnish community, there were thousands of active users, I kept a list. However, for some reason lately the narrative everywhere about Mastodon is that it is difficult and it has no future and people have mostly left to Bluesky. I kinda get that, because even for me starting last year was messy. But things get better, I wish more people would see that.

Mastodon is special. The Fediverse is special. Here's to another year!