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Comment by jamesb93 | Hacker News Reader

I really find Mastodon really empty. I had a look and the first things that popped up into my federated feed were escorts.

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It depends on where you look and who you follow. Swifter.at became a refuge for sex workers and is one of the larger instances.

However, you can filter instances, and/or sign up on an instance that blocks switter users.

There is activity, especially if you sign up on a huge instance like mastodon.social (although I don’t recommend this). instances.social lists all active instances that you can peruse through.

Is it easy to run your own instance and be highly selective about federation? How about not being listed on lists of instances?

It's easy to run your own instance. Mastodon provides a docker image, provided you have a server or VPS that can handle its asset compilation. I think you can get by with 2gb minimum. You can filter any instances that you don't want to federate with.

I'm not sure what you mean about not being listed on lists of instances. If you mean not federating your own instance, well, that goes against the entire premise of the fediverse / federation. Running your instance means it will propagate. Your posts will show up in the instances of whoever is following you.

Thats likely because sex workers are being banned from centralized social media services and censorship is difficult on a federated network such as Mastadon.

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