@Joshbear Hi Joshua, thanks for joining the instance! I think that there should be some extra care taken when running an instance as a safer space. It depends on how open that you want it to be for people to join and for people on that instance to communicate with others out of it.

@darius and what he's done with friend.camp would be an excellent resource to consider, as well as this guide that he made https://runyourown.social/

@david @darius thank you! I will certainly check it out. I just tried to set Mastodon up on Digital Ocean but the install keeps having issues. I can setup a Ghost blog platform in my sleep because I have done it a hundred times. However I am not familiar with Mastodon setup process and how to avoid a misconfigured install.

@Joshbear @darius Yeah, it's still not the most simple and straightforward. What's the youth group, if you don't mind my asking? I'm curious how you are thinking of using it and what safeguards to consider. 13+ age at least?

@david @darius actually I am the Vice President of Yakima Pride. Non-profit Foundation that hosts a Festival and Parade along with several other events. I was testing the concept of having a social network. I fear that Facebook groups are just not doing well and we also have many LGBTQ+ youth that don’t use Facebook. So I thought about making something new and different. After reading the friend.camp article, he speaks to the ideal user base is no more than 100/150 users... thoughts?

@Joshbear @darius I'd agree with that, or at least suggest that it should be limited to people who are part of the organization. I agree, Facebook usage seems to be declining among younger users, and there are better ways to make a safe environment. I'd not make it an alternative to another full service, but an additional mode of communication.