What is Sidequest?
Sidequest is a ultra-tiny, invite-only, private social media platform.
I own and operate sidequest totally on my own by running open-source software on a cloud server.
In essence, it’s a little bit like twitter but the size of a discord server – only people who are invited can join, and there are few enough members that you can get to know everyone.
The idea is to build a close-knit community where you can catch up with your friends and post about your day, where everyone you interact with you know through the grape-vine.
Why make a social media service?
I got tired of twitter advertising to me and having a content model that encourages conflict, and read a really great article on the subject of running your own micro-social media hub: http://runyourown.social
How is this different from twitter?
There will always be less than 75 total users, and every single one of them will be related in some way, because they’ve gotten an invite from someone, so we’ve screened that they’re cool. There’s no desire to make this bigger than that – this is a small hideaway.
No advertisers, algorithms, or monetization at all. (Sidequest currently costs about $30/month in computing resources for me to maintain, which I pay for out-of-pocket)
We own the server and code, so if we need to make a change to how something works it is possible (or we can make features specifically for users)
What are the caveats?
This is a small service running on a tiny computer somewhere in the cloud. Downtime might happen, data loss might happen. Don’t save anything to sidequest you need to keep, and I reserve full rights to terminate the service if it ever becomes unmaintainable.
Since there are very few people on Sidequest, you can’t scroll content endlessly like on twitter, and you can’t gain a platform or large following or market your work.
Sidequest isn’t designed to be anonymous. It’s designed to be a safe space where we bring in people we’re comfortable with.
Is Sidequest for me?
Maybe? It’s very small, and you kind of have to remember to use it and check it right now.
If you use twitter for content ™ or for trying to reach a wider audience, it won’t satisfy those needs. However, I have – anecdotally – found it very fulfilling to get to share details about my day in a safe and private way with the people I care about.
What are the criteria for joining?
Right now I’m adding folks who are interested that I – or a close friend – can vouch for.
Once the site stabilizes and has an initial group of people, we’ll have to get a more formal adding process – it’s important everyone can get to know everyone, and that someone new joining is something everyone’s on board with. It’s like a house party, if someone new walks in the door, we’d want to introduce them.
How do I join?
Message Vivian for an invite link 🙂
I’ve joined… what now?
Please edit your bio to include:
- Your first name & pronouns
- How other people might know you (for example your school, hobbies, mutual friends… anything you think you might have in common with others!)
- Any fun facts you like.
Follow anyone you want to see stuff from! Explore!
Try to post something maybe once a day – doesn’t have to be good, meaningful content, just talk about how your day is going. Say hi!
What’s the difference between ‘home’, ‘local’, and ‘federated?’
There are three main timelines:
Home is the page that shows you content from people you follow (and only people you follow)
Local shows you posts from everyone on Sidequest. So if you wanted, you could follow close friends but crawl through local any time you wanted to just see what people are up to.
Federated would show you any other non-sidequest servers if we weren’t private. Since we’re private it doesn’t do anything and is the same as local, lol.
How Private is Sidequest?
Sidequest is ‘99%’ private. People who don’t have accounts can’t post or view the public timeline. That said, anyone who has the permalink to a post or account could view them, so it isn’t TOTALLY secret what you put on there, just mostly secret.
What is ‘mastodon’?
Mastodon is a software that works as a microblogging platform, similar to twitter.
Sidequest runs an open-source version of mastodon, but we’ve made it totally private, so your posts aren’t shared with anyone else on other mastodon servers.
I’m used to using social media on my phone. Do I have to use the website?
No – there are some applications for iOS and android that will let you browse private mastodon instances. I recommend Tusky for Android.
Note the official Mastodon app is bugged at time of writing and doesn’t support private servers yet.