Foojay.social: A Mastodon Server for the Java Community

Twitter has been my “source of truth” for a long time. I learned a lot from the many technical people who share their work and knowledge on it. It got me in contact with Foojay.io and allowed me to share my Java writing which eventually led to my job at Azul! I also wasted too many hours scrolling, but I still believe most of them were worth it.

What is happening at Twitter HQ since Musk took it over is a turning point. The way the people are treated made it great is not how a company should be led.

I already had a Mastodon account for many years. It’s not a full-Twitter-alternative, but a micro-blogging system that has a lot of resemblance to Twitter. But as Twitter was still a good place, I didn’t use that account very actively.

What Is Mastodon

To be clear: it's not a Twitter replacement! It doesn't have all the same features or work entirely the same. But...that's actually a good thing!

How Mastodon explains what they are: "Do you have an email? If you do, you already understand how Mastodon works."

Main facts about Mastodon:

• It's an open-source GitHub project created by Eugen “Gargron” Rochko, a German programmer.
• No company controls and owns it.
• It's federated, meaning there is not one single central service. Anyone can host it and use for his/her use or open it to others to join
• There are no advertisements.
• Your timeline is not controlled by an algorithm; it's just the people you follow.
• When creating a Mastodon account, you must select a server to join. Some of these are suffering from growing pains and have become slower in the last few days as they need to scale up to be able to handle the new members.
• You can move from one server to another (or your own) anytime.
• The owner/administrator of a server can read all your messages. Please consider all your posts public and readable. 
• You can edit your posts! Yes, really!!!  

Want to learn more? Jeroen Baert has written this lovely overview. 

A Mastodon Server for the Java Community

When I saw many people start to move to Mastodon and the network became overloaded, it was clear we needed an instance for the Java community. I’m very thankful that Foojay provided that possibility. This happened in three steps.

Is There a Need for a Java-Oriented Mastodon Server?

(11/14/22)

If we start a Java-specific Mastodon service, who can join it? 

As there is an enormous interest in Mastodon at this moment, and all these new users are looking for free and fast services, we probably need to limit the number of people joining in guaranteeing a stable performance and reasonable cost. 

Keeping the content safe and friendly might also need some moderators.

As you understand, no decision has been made yet.

How do you think we should proceed?

Gathering the Reactions

(11/15/22)

• Yes, many likes and +1, so most of the reactions think this would be a good idea.
• No, not everyone is convinced Twitter will disappear, and an alternative is needed.
• Nobody volunteered (yet) to assist (pay?) for the server and moderate

Let’s Do This!

(11/16/22)

After thinking about it and collecting the feedback, there was only one direction forward: get a Foojay Mastodon service up and running! 

And thanks to toot.io, we don't need to worry about maintenance, and the bill has been covered.

Update After One Month

On 12/16/22, we published an update one month after foojay.social was announced. At that time, we had 118 active users who interacted more than 4000 times

We started with a small instance to host foojay.social via toot.io, which provides us 200Gb of storage space and should be able to handle 250 active users. This means within our initial setup; we could welcome even more Java/JVM/OpenJDK members! And because we worked via a specialized hosting provider, we can quickly scale up.

So... still welcome to join!

Introduction Video

In this video, I give a short introduction to Mastodon and how you can start using it.