Starting your own instance is the best way to help keep the Fediverse healthy. The more nodes that exist, the less power any singular instance has and if your instance dies or is taken down you’ll still have your own. You don’t have to be on Poast to follow Poast users, and vice-versa.

The software of choice on this side of the Fediverse is Pleroma (and its forks). Rebased+Soapbox is the software that Poast runs on. Akkoma is another fork of Pleroma that adds features.

There’s also Misskey which has a lot of features and is maintained by a Japanese team and Mastodon which holds the biggest market share and is one of the oldest packages but is also expensive to host.

Click these to learn how to start your own instance!

Install Misskey or Pleroma via fediverse.express (automated)
Install Rebased+Soapbox if you want a copy of Poast
Install Akkoma
Install Pleroma
Install Misskey
Install Mastodon

And feel free to ask questions if you need help.

@pasture I do have one question, if I start my own instance, is it possible to transfer my account to the new instance I'll create?

My plan is to build a new gaming/emulator PC in march 2023, and repurpose this old pc as a NAS and have a VM in it running my own fediverse instance.