Land AcknowledgementThe Niagara Region sits on the traditional territory held by Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, Wendat, and the Chonnonton peoples.
The data of niagara.social is hosted by a company (Linode) based in Philadelphia, on the traditional lands of the Lenape, Susquehannock, Shawnee, and Haudenosaunee.
Whether we are Indigenous, settlers, or newcomers, as we live, work, play, and organize on this land, we must remember that we are all treaty people, and have a duty to respect both the land and the treaties made upon it. Settlers, in particular, and newcomers, perhaps to a lesser extent, must take care to recognize the many ways that we (Kostyn, a settler is writing this) along with our representatives are systemically violating the treaties and committing on-going genocide of Indigenous peoples for our benefit, and we need to be accountable to that and to work to end and reverse this exploitation.
To that end, niagara.social stands with and supports Indigenous-led movements including
Land Back,
Idle No More,
Unist’ot’en, and 1492 Landback Lane. We encourage you to check out
One Dish, One Mic, a local Indigenous radio show (and podcast) and to donate to the
Niikinaaganaa Foundation at https://payyourrent.ca/.
Labour Acknowledgement & Thank YousThe niagara.social guidelines were heavily influenced by rules, policies, and guidelines written by
Darius Kazemi of friend.camp and by the
"About" page of 438punk.house. Our blocklists were created by
@oliphant@oliphant.social. We are also so grateful to the work of
@mart0@438punk.house who put together the guide that got this instance up and running at http://n00q.net.
We thank them for the work they have done and continue to do, and acknowledge the labour that goes into creating and maintaining a server. We know we could not have done this without the work of many folks who came before us.
What is Mastodon+Hometown and the FediverseHere we aim to provide a brief overview of Mastodon and the wider Fediverse that is accessible to a many different readers. This is not meant to be a technical or perfectly comprehensive definition, but rather, an introduction that will hopefully help you to understand and dream along with us about how the niagara.social server ("instance") can best be utilized.
Mastodon is one platform among many within the Fediverse ("the Fedi" for short). For now, let's leave the other platforms to the side and focus only on Mastodon. As far as functionality goes, it may be useful to think of Mastodon as sort of like a mix between Discord and Twitter. However, Mastodon is different from these platforms in important ways. All commercial social media sites (Bluesky, Threads, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Instagram, etc.) are centrally controlled by a single company or entity that has full control over how users interact with their platform. Conversely, anyone can run a Mastodon server for any purpose (if they can get over the technical hurdles of doing so) so there are many Mastodon servers out in the world, run by all sorts of folks for all sorts of purposes.
In order for the different Mastodon servers to talk to each other, they need to federate together. Federating basically tells other servers in the Fediverse that your instance exists and allows your instance to interact with other instances and other instances to interact with yours. Of course, as with all things, some servers are set up for nefarious purposes. They might be set up specifically to spam or phish other users. They might have lax policies on harassment or bigotry. They might be well-meaning but have inexperienced moderators that allow too many new accounts and don't act swiftly on reported bad behaviour.
Mastodon is a free and open-source microblogging platform. There are no ads and there is no profit incentive. Mastodon servers are typically run by individuals or small organizations to build online communities as an alternative to commercial social media. Those individuals or small organizations pay for the hosting, managing, and domain registration and it is kind to figure out how you can help to support the instance financially (we don't have a donation system set up yet, but stay tuned!).
The data used to create and run your account, your followers, and posts are all stored on the server where your instance is hosted. This data could be accessed by your server administrator(s) or anyone who has administrative access to the hosting server. This is important to understand so that you can assess your risk and act accordingly. This means that Mastodon is not a good place to have private or sensitive conversations. An end-to-end encrypted messaging app (like Signal) is a much more appropriate place for online conversations that need some assurance of privacy.
When you log into Mastodon, you will be greeted with a Home feed. This is one of three feeds you have access to by default as a Mastodon user. Your home feed is a chronological list of posts and boots (shared posts) by people and hashtags you follow. You also have access to the "Global" or "Live" feed which will show you all of the posts members of niagara.social would see on their home feeds combined into one big firehose of information. This is a good place to go to see what's going on in the world and to find new people and hashtags to follow. niagara.social is running a "fork" of Mastodon called Hometown. A "fork" is a different version of a piece of open source software that is being taken in a slightly different direction than the original (think of it like a fork in a road where one road turns into two). Hometown has a few interesting features but the one that is most relevant here is your access to an additional feed! If you click the globe icon in the side-bar, you'll be taken to the Live feeds page which as three tabs: "This server," "Other servers," and "All." "This server" is an option only from Hometown that allows you to see only posts from the members of niagara.social allowing us to build a community where the users are able to communicate more directly with only members from the community. You can also set your posting privacy on your account, or on a post-by-post basis. Hometown also lets you share things to the niagara.social community without federating to the whole Fedi, to do that click on the chain icon in between "CW" and the language button on a new post. If you want even more sorting, there is another cool feature called "Lists" that you can use to make your own feeds as you see fit (for example, you might have a "politics" feed and a "carpentry" feed).
Mastodon treats "likes" and "retweets" or "re-blogs" differently than commercial social media platforms which makes it difficult for posts to go "viral" on mastodon in the same way they do on other social media sites. Pressing the favourite button for a post lets the poster know that you liked or appreciated their post and keeps it in a list of your favourites that you can browse through later. Your followers won't know that you interacted with the post at all and neither will the followers of the original poster. On the other hand, boosts broadcast the post to your followers who may then boost the post to others. If you like a post and want your followers to see it, you can favourite and boost it. If you want to engage with a post further, you can reply to it. If you want to save a post for later but don't want to engage with it in any other way nor let the poster know that you are engaging with it, you can bookmark it.
Using Mastodon means that it is necessary to put some trust in your Mastodon server administrator(s) and their ability to keep your information safe and secure. While this can be a bit unsettling, on a small, local Mastodon instance like this one, your data is not in the hands of a large corporation who's profit margin depends on extracting every last bit of attention and data from you. While commercial social media companies use proprietary software and algorithms to drive engagement, serve ads, and profit from users' attention and data in ways that are opaque and undemocratic, Mastodon simply shows you content from users and hashtags you follow in chronological order. A good administrator will keep services up and running, perform necessary upgrades on the system, apply security patches, and handle technical issues that come up with the server/instance. There is no need for administrators to access anyone's data and they should not do that under any circumstances. We strive to be good and trustworthy server administrators and welcome feedback and questions as they come.
The Fediverse is not a perfect utopia. It is messy and complicated, just like real life. There are some tools to deal with bad behaviour, but they are also imperfect. One tool is block lists and defederation. Some community members have set up block lists that help new instances identify known bad servers so that their members can not interact with your instance. Also, for now, we are only allowing access to our instance to people that we have a personal connection to. You can reach out to the administrators and moderators of niagara.social directly if you come across inappropriate content or are on the receiving end of harassment, and we will do everything we can to resolve the issue.
Navigating Mastodon+HometownMastodon is most easily navigated by following users and hashtags. If you have a particular interest, others with the same interest may already have started posting with the use of a hashtag. You can follow the hashtag to receive posts from everyone that your instance is connected to that posts something with that hashtag. This can help you to find new and interesting people to follow and make friends with. Using hashtags in your own posts can help people to find you too. Discovering hashtags can be an exercise in trial and error, but if you don't see something you want to talk about, just start a new one!
If you're looking to find about about stuff going on in Niagara, we recommend trying #NiagaraON #Niagara #NiagaraEvents #NiagaraActivism and #OurHomeSTC.
You can use the niagara.social Mastodon instance by visiting the
URL (i.e., niagara.social) in a browser and logging in, or you can use
one of many apps. The default Mastodon app isn't necessarily the best and each app has a different set of features and a different look and feel. However, most are free and open-source and you certainly should not need to pay anything to use a Mastodon app. We recommend trying out
Tusky for Android and
Ice Cubes for iOS, but you may find one that works better for you. Usually 3rd party apps don't support local only posting (i.e., making a post only to other members of niagara.social), however you can copy and paste :local_only: to the end of your post to make local-only posts from those apps.
While there is a section called "DMs" or "@" there are no encrypted messages or assurances of privacy on Mastodon, so this should not be used for private or sensitive conversations. Using this feature means that your post is only visible to users that are tagged with the "@" character in your post. and notifies whoever you @. With the link though, technically anyone could see the message. Again, for any sensitive conversation, we recommend taking it off Mastodon and using Signal instead.
Mastodon EtiquetteThe Mastodon community has a number of etiquette norms that we think are important to follow. Many of these practices have started to become more widely used on other platforms recently and they help to keep the platform enjoyable and accessible for everyone.
Please provide
ALT Text for all posts with images. As well as making posts with images more accessible for visually impaired members and those that use screen readers to engage with Mastodon, ALT Text can be helpful to explain something about an image that may not be obvious to other users. Please feel free to be creative and even add fun easter eggs to your ALT text.
Here are some comprehensive instructions on how to include ALT text with your posts.
Please include
content warnings and hide posts that may include sensitive topics. We also encourage you to include descriptive hashtags on your posts so that uses who are avoiding/filtering out specific topics through hashtags don't see posts that are on a triggering or undesirable topic.
Here are comprehensive instructions on how to include content warnings.
Please
support your Mastodon mods @niagara.social! Running this server does incur some (at present) modest expenses. We are paying out of pocket to keep the mastodon server up and running and also contributing our time to verify and approve requests and moderate interaction on the site. A small, occasional donation from our members would help to keep us going. As of May 2025, it costs about USD $55 per month for hosting with Linode, and USD $43.17 per year for the domain from Hover.
Our Vision for niagara.socialniagara.social is a Mastodon+Hometown instance that hopes to be a social hub for the region of Niagara, Ontario, Canada. We want to build a safe, inclusive, fun and useful place for those in the region who want to still be social online without being forced to use private software.
Some ideas of how you can get engaged and help build niagara.social:
- use hashtags to build community around a particular topic
- post news and events/propose community actions/engagements
- share memes and make jokes
- provide commentary on the world around you
- engage with your fellow community members
- share your art
- share garden updates
- learn new things
niagara.social is committed to not engaging with Meta or any potential future Meta owned instances to the best of our abilities.
ModerationGuideline ("Server Rules" below) violations are evaluated on a case-by-case basis as detailed below. If you violate any one of these guidelines, the niagara.social team may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from niagara.social, though as believers in transformative justice, we probably start first with a conversation. If you are found to cause further issues, you will also be identified as a problem user to admins of other instances. While we do not expect to move away from the principles of these guidelines, they may expand and over time as this instance grows. In general, we expect to follow this process when handling guideline violations:
- Respond to any violation allegation within 7 days with a detailed plan/explanation of how the incident will be handled with consultation with the reportee and reported where we deem necessary.
- Execute that plan.
- Document its execution and the results and post it on the @admin@niagara.social user account for all members of niagara.social (and elsewhere) to see.
- Solicit feedback from niagara.social members about the handling of the incident.
Additionally, what you post here, your account and behaviours belongs to you, and you have the right to delete it and share it elsewhere. Due to the nature of the Fediverse however, your posts will be saved on other servers (outside of our control). We do not allow or condone the theft or copying of this data for private enterprise, or government surveillance, though there is little we can do against this. @Facebook/"Meta," know you do not have permission to collect this data, you bastards. Same goes for you, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, all AI bots etc.