Previously I had tried to get GNU Social running on my own hosted domain as a way to interact with Mastodon. I did not get it to work, for reasons unclear to me, I could follow people on Mastodon but would not receive messages, nor would they see mine.

This morning I saw the message below in my Mastodon timeline.

It originates from Peter Rukavina’s own GNU Social install. So at least he got the ‘sending mentions’ part working. He is also able to receive my replies, as my responses show up underneath his original message. Including ones I limited the visibility of it seems.

Now I am curious to compare notes. Which version of GNU Social? Any tweaks? Does Peter receive my timeline? How do permissions propagate (I only let people follow me after I approve them)? And more. I notice that his URL structures are different from those in my GNU Social install for instance.