A newbie's guide to self-hosting: GoToSocial part 1 (installation and set-up)
A step-by-step visual tutorial for newbies about installing and setting up the federated microblogging service GoToSocial
Elena Rossini
Essays from an Italian filmmaker and photographer about creativity, the open social web, and harnessing the power of the internet for change
Latest posts
W Social: a Broken Ghost Town?
W Social has been experiencing major technical problems for over a week: it is effectively a ghost town, filled with thousands of new accounts that cannot use the platform.
W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data
W Social's tagline is "Trust Your Feed" but the company's landing page displays inflated engagement metrics - a misrepresentation that contradicts its own promise.
W Social, Public Institutions and the Theater of European Digital Sovereignty
European public institutions are betting big on digital sovereignty and open source software. And yet they recently moved their Bluesky accounts to W Social, a private, for profit network owned by Swedish entrepreneurs that has quietly gone closed-source.
The Untold Story About W Social: Unconventional Beginnings, Strategic Pitches and Conflicting Signals
A deep dive into the origin story of W Social, an analysis of the strategic arguments they have been using to appeal to government officials, media companies and advertisers... and the discussion of conflicting signals they have been sending
W Social uncovered: the reality behind the hype
An article dispelling myths about W Social, the new European platform that aims to rival X: it is a fork of Bluesky that shares many similarities with Eurosky and requires government ID to sign up.
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 5: Upgrades & Maintenance
A post that explains how to keep a YunoHost server running healthily with system updates and how to run application updates (and revert back to a snapshot if things go awry).
Openness, transparency and reach: three reasons why public institutions should embrace the Fediverse
An article making the case that the Fediverse is a fantastic communication platform for public institutions - because of its openness, transparency and reach.
What I'm up to: February 2026 edition 👩💻
a blog post that chronicles what I've been up to this month: from attending FOSDEM in Brussels to creating an easy-to-follow self-hosting guide for newbies…
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 4: backups
The fourth article in my series about "self-hosting for newbies" explaining how I take care of backups for my YunoHost server.
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 3: Let’s install NextCloud
A step-by-step visual guide for self-hosting newbies that shows off how to install NextCloud via the YunoHost system
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 2: installation & setup
A step-by-step visual guide for newbies about how to install and setup YunoHost - it's easy, fast and accessible to all
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 1: reasons + requirements
The first post in a four part miniseries about self-hosting for newbies via YunoHost
The rebellion will be federated – 2025 edition
Looking back at a year of FOSS activism, spurred by political events.
What I'm up to: October 2025 edition 🎃
a blog post that chronicles what I've been up to this month: from speaking at a conference in Berlin, to 3 podcast interviews about the Fediverse...