Instante is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub where users can post their moments to share them with friends. On Instante, users can publish anything they want: links, pictures, text, video. All Instante servers are interoperable as a federated network (users on one server can seamlessly communicate with users from another one, including non-Instante software that implements ActivityPub)!

Instante is a fork of Mastodon. Checkout the Mastodon open source project here: joinmastodon.org

Click below to learn more in a video:

Navigation

• Project homepage 🐘
• Support the development via Patreon
• View sponsors
• Blog
• Documentation
• Browse Instante servers
• Browse Instante apps

Features

No vendor lock-in: Fully interoperable with any conforming platform

It doesn't have to be Instante, whatever implements ActivityPub is part of the social network! Learn more

Real-time, chronological timeline updates

See the updates of people you're following appear in real-time in the UI via WebSockets. There's a firehose view as well!

Media attachments like images and short videos

Upload and view images and WebM/MP4 videos attached to the updates. Videos with no audio track are treated like GIFs; normal videos are looped - like vines!

Safety and moderation tools

Private posts, locked accounts, phrase filtering, muting, blocking and all sorts of other features, along with a reporting and moderation system. Learn more

OAuth2 and a straightforward REST API

Instante acts as an OAuth2 provider so 3rd party apps can use the REST and Streaming APIs, resulting in a rich app ecosystem with a lot of choices!

Deployment

Tech stack:

• Ruby on Rails powers the REST API and other web pages
• React.js and Redux are used for the dynamic parts of the interface
• Node.js powers the streaming API

Requirements:

• PostgreSQL 9.5+
• Redis 4+
• Ruby 2.5+
• Node.js 12+

The repository includes deployment configurations for Docker and docker-compose, but also a few specific platforms like Heroku, Scalingo, and Nanobox. The stand-alone installation guide is available in the documentation.

A Vagrant configuration is included for development purposes. To use it, complete following steps:

• Install Vagrant and Virtualbox
• Run vagrant up
• Run vagrant ssh -c "cd /vagrant && foreman start"
• Open http://mastodon.local in your browser

Contributing

Instante is free, open-source software licensed under AGPLv3.

You can open issues for bugs you've found or features you think are missing. You can also submit pull requests to this repository, or submit translations using Crowdin. To get started, take a look at CONTRIBUTING.md. If your contributions are accepted into Instante, you can request to be paid through our OpenCollective.

IRC channel: #mastodon on irc.libera.chat

License

Copyright (C) 2016-2021 Eugen Rochko & other Instante contributors (see AUTHORS.md)

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.