ChatGPT prompt: “Write a theme song for a Mastodon server called Free Radical, which exists to help marginalized people find a welcome and safe home on the Internet.” Verse 1: Welcome to Free Radical where we open up our doors To those who’ve been excluded, who’ve been left out and ignored Our servers are a safe space where everyone can be A part of something greater, a community that’s free

The United Federation of Instances is a bad idea, and Free Radical will not participate. The “UFoI” is an organization of fediverse instances making a compact: if an instance enters the compact, and they abide by the group’s Code of Ethics, then all members of the group promise not to disconnect from or block that instance. If one instance believes that another is violating that Code of Ethics, then they can present evidence to the elected board of the group.

I want to have a cool logo but I can’t really justify paying to commission one to my family. Conversely, I’m not going to ask an artist to work for free, because I value their work and don’t want to imply that I don’t. So, how I can I reconcile these seemingly incompatible requirements? I’m not sure, but I’ve been tossing this around: One or more artists submit rough drafts of their ideas, I select one that resonates with me and help the artist develop it, That artist gives me exclusive rights to the design so that there aren’t 43 instances with “my” branding, but The artist keeps all merchandising rights, and I help them advertise stickers, t-shirts, etc.

I launched the Free Radical Mastodon instance on Friday, April 7, 2017. It was approximately the 250th instance in the fediverse and there were about 100,000 users. Today, 6 days later, there are 613 instances and 222,814 users. Make that 223,021. No, 223,050.

We are growing like wildfire.