phire.place

What is this place?

phire.place is a social media platform that runs on Hometown software. It's part of the Fediverse, which means it's capable of talking to any other social media platform that speaks the same technical language (ActivityPub). This includes any site that runs Hometown, Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, BookWyrm, etc.

The main thing you need to know is that phire.place by itself works basically like Twitter, but it exists in a world where any random nerd can run a Twitter server and all of our Twitter servers can talk to each other. You can follow anyone in the Fediverse using their full address, which will look something like @name@nerdserver.com. For example, I'm @phire@phire.place.

If you later change your mind about what server you want to be on, it's fairly easy to migrate your network from one server to another, but you can't migrate your post history currently. People generally move servers if they want to be more discoverable to a specific interest or affinity group, or if they don't like the moderation policies of their server. Otherwise, the server you pick won't really affect your experience of the Fediverse.

Logistics

The best iOS apps are Ice Cubes or Ivory. The best Android app is Tusky. If you want a multi-column Tweetdeck-like interface, you can enable "Advanced Web Interface" in your settings. Your "Mastodon instance" is phire.place.

Finding other people

You can follow anyone from any server I haven't banned (see below) by pasting their full username or profile URL into the search bar of whatever interface you're using. You can also follow other people from their profiles directly, but you'll need to sign-in every time. Copying and pasting is unfortunately the most reliable option. I know that's annoying, sorry.

Streetpass is a browser extension that will collect the Mastodon usernames of people who have listed them on their websites as you browse the internet for you to review and follow. You can also use this Fedifinder tool to find people from Twitter who've put their Mastodon profiles in their Twitter bios.

The best way to find new people is to write a brief #introduction (and tag it as such), and include some hashtags of what you're interested in. It's the norm to boost your friends' intros, and it's the quickest way to reach more people.

I'm more than happy to answer any other questions you have - please reach out!

Privacy settings

The privacy settings of posts can be a little bit confusing. Here's a good infographic that explains how your posts will or won't show up for other people. If you want to use Hometown like a public Twitter account, you'll want to set your default visibility to "Global". If you want to use Hometown more like Peach, you'll want to set your default visibility to "Followers only", and also restrict people from following you without approval. Not all apps are good at showing you requests, so you may need to check the web interface to approve follows.

Like Livejournal, you can change your visibility settings on a per-post basis. Search engines will not be able to see your public posts, unless you manually turn on search engine indexing. By default, there is full-text search, which is great because you mostly won't get weird drive-by reply-guy-ing. However, that does mean that if you want your posts to be visible to people who don't follow you, you'll need to use hashtags. Please use #PascalCase (capitalize each word) when creating hashtags so they're easier for screen readers.

Administration

The only admin for the server right now is me, Jenny. If you don't know who I am, this server probably isn't for you.

This server is not a democracy (yet*). I'm trying to make this a nice place for me and my friends and their friends to hang out, which means that I will not be tolerating hate speech of any sort, incitement to violence or harassment, free speech nonsense, alt-right nonsense, or any devil's advocacy. This server is pro trans and disability rights and anti cop, and I am not interested in arguing about it.

If you notice behaviour that contravenes the above on this server, please report or DM me and I will investigate. If you think I've made a mistake in blocking your instance, feel free to reach out by email.

Since I'm paying for server costs out-of-pocket, I'll be fairly restrictive in allowing sign-ups. If you use this server, you can buy me a coffee here!

*I'd be happy to run this space as a jointly owned coop and sharing both governance and costs. If that is something you're interested in exploring, give me a shout.

Technical and legal details

This server is hosted by Spacebear, a managed hosting service for Fediverse tools. That means that our server shares space and resources with other servers, so there may occasionally be performance hiccups if there's a spike in usage volume. I don't have direct access to either the software or the database, which is good and bad. Bad because I can't make custom modifications to the codebase for just this server and can't personally diagnose problems. Good because I'm not actually a sysadmin and you should always pay someone to sysadmin for you if you can, and I can't read your DMs even if I wanted to (which I really don't).

The current privacy policy is the default Mastodon/Hometown privacy policy, and we're beholden also to Spacebear's privacy policy.

Moderated servers

Hometown generally allows you to view content from and interact with users from any other server in the fediverse. These are the exceptions that have been made on this particular server.

Limited servers

Posts from these servers will be hidden in public timelines and conversations, and no notifications will be generated from their users interactions, unless you are following them:

Server	Reason
threads.net	Prevent federation with Threads (insta's Twitter clone)

Suspended servers

No data from these servers will be processed, stored or exchanged, making any interaction or communication with users from these servers impossible:

Server	Reason
80percent.social	Antivax
bae.st	Lolicon
baraag.net	Lolicon
bitcoinhackers.org	Crypto
bsky.brid.gy	Bluesky bridge, guard against opt-out
childpawn.shop	Lolicon
cliterati.club	Transphobia
cum.salon	Lolicon
detroitriotcity.com	Harassment
develop.gab.com	Alt-right nonsense
dobbs.town	Cult shit
feral.cafe	Promotion of bestiality
freak.university	Lolicon
freeatlantis.com	Free speech nonsense
freecumextremist.com	Lolicon
freespeech.firedragonstudios.com	Free speech nonsense
freespeechextremist.com	Free speech nonsense
freewahaextremist.com	Free speech nonsense
freezepeach.xyz	Free speech nonsense
gab.ai	Alt-right nonsense
gab.best	Alt-right nonsense
gab.polaris-1.work	Alt-right nonsense
gab.sleeck.eu	Alt-right nonsense
gabfed.com	Alt-right nonsense
gangstalking.services	Harassment
gearlandia.haus	Racism
gleasonator.com	Free speech nonsense
glindr.org	Transphobia
hentai.baby	Lolicon
https:nicecrew.digital	Alt-right nonsense
iddqd.social	Harassment
justicewarrior.social	Free speech nonsense
kiwifarms.cc	Transphobia, harassment, doxxing, just the worst assholes on the internet
kiwifarms.is	Kiwifarms
kiwifarms.net	Kiwifarms
kneegrows.top	Racism
leafposter.club	Free speech nonsense
letsalllovela.in	CSAM
mastodon.green	Harassment
mastodon.loliandstuff.moe	Lolicon
noagenda.social	Alt-right nonsense
noagendasocial.com	Alt-right nonsense
pleroma.kiwifarms.net	Kiwifarms
pleroma.mouse.services	Spam
po.ast
preteengirls.biz	Lolicon
qoto.org	Free speech nonsense
rapefeminists.network	Self explanatory
raplst.town	Self explanatory
ryona.agency	Harassment
sander.social	Spam
sinblr.com	Spam
social.sphere.com.ai	Spam
solagg.com	Spam
spinster.xyz	Transphobia
stopthesteal2020.us	Alt-right nonsense
truthsocial.com	Trump bullshit
unsafe.space	Free speech nonsense
ussr.win	Spam
yggdrasil.social	Alt-right nonsense
youjo.love	Lolicon