My Thoughts on GoToSocial

I'm a huge fan of self-hosting, and at some point, I would like to permanently host my own ActivityPub-powered social network without having to rely on someone else’s service.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you'll know that I've attempted this before with Mastodon and failed quite drastically. I've discussed my journey of self-hosting with ActivityPub at length on multiple occasions—here are a few posts worth reading:

• The Challenges of the Fediverse. What No One Is Prepared to Talk About.
• I Broke Mastodon, Playing with GoToSocial and More Fediverse Updates

In short, I broke Mastodon because it’s written in a language I'm not familiar with (Ruby). Trying to debug and resolve issues was always going to be an uphill battle. Eventually, I gave up and moved back to another instance hosted by someone else. However, my desire to self-host never waned. I wanted an alternative to Mastodon that would allow me to access the Fediverse using my own hardware with minimal effort required for troubleshooting.

Cue GoToSocial (also known as GtS)

What is GoToSocial?

According to the website, GoToSocial can be described as ...

GoToSocial provides a lightweight, customizable, and safety-focused entryway into the Fediverse.

According to its website, GoToSocial offers a streamlined, privacy-focused alternative to Mastodon, providing users with greater control over interactions like replies and follows. Furthermore, it’s written in the popular Go programming language, meaning that the entire service runs from a single binary file. This makes it less resource-intensive and more resilient compared to Mastodon.

It's also worth noting that GtS doesn’t come with a front-end interface; to use it, you'll need third-party software. However, since GtS utilises the Mastodon API schema, it’s compatible with many Mastodon apps and front-ends (such as my personal favourite, Mammoth)

My Experience of Self-hosting

The last time I experimented with GoToSocial was a few months ago when it was still in alpha. It’s fair to say that it’s much easier to set up and get running than Mastodon (see screenshot above). I managed to get my own instance up and running, but being a relatively new instance, I experienced significant challenges federating with other services. This is part of a larger issue I have with the Fediverse, which I've discussed in more detail here.

That said, I recently noticed on my Mastodon feed that GoToSocial has released several updates and has now moved out of alpha. In addition to bug fixes, their Beta release (nicknamed "Selective Sloth") includes new features such as:

• Custom interaction policies
• Support for different media types
• Discussion threads
• Data import/export functionality
• Custom themes

More details on these updates can be found here.

All of this sounds promising, but will GtS gain significant traction and impact the Fediverse? That, I cannot say for sure, which leads me to my final point.

What is the Future of GoToSocial

Being the pessimist that I am, I would love to say yes, but given current trends, it seems likely that it will take some time for GtS to gain momentum. However, with platforms like Ghost implementing ActivityPub, this could change the landscape. I’ll explore that topic in a future post.

For now, I believe GoToSocial has a promising future and may become a strong player within the ActivityPub ecosystem and the wider Fediverse.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, in order for Mastodon and the Fediverse to truly take off, we need more people hosting their own instances. Given that GtS is far less resource-intensive than Mastodon, it might partially solve this problem by enabling people to host it on their own devices (such as a Raspberry Pi) at home.