Post #3906150

2026-07-18 08:03 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/116929510685583647 Installed #yunohost yesterday on my Proxmox home server to fiddle around and was about to deploy #GoToSocial. But this "Danger" Box in the docs, saying the domain will be taken forever by this instance of GTS scares me. Or is this the case for every #ActivityPub Server anyway? I thought, only the full handle like "@user@social.domain.net" can be problematic when being refused because of caching and generated keys. Any experience with that? https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/v0.22.0/getting_started/ #selfhosting

Replies (1)

@bryan@dusty.ninja 2026-07-18 08:40

@ViP@mastodon.social It is a security feature (or annoyance) with all fedi/activitypub servers. A server generates a private/public key and that is the key pair for the domain forever. This means if you've already run a server on that domain and don't have the old keys - many servers will refuse to federate. You have to go to each server that refuses to federate, find an admin, and convince them to delete the public key in their DB. regular mastodon servers are pretty permissive and after a certain amount of time will just accept the new key. but much of the fediverse is not like that. Anyway, this is why some use a prefix of gts (gotoserver). So if I was worried I would have made gts.example.com. This just makes it a little easier to "dispose" of a server name if you change your mind. Also, lets you have things like misskey.example.com, mastodon.example.com, etc.

Open ##3906453