Mastodon News
Posted on April 06, 2026
Categories: General — Tags: #mastodon, #drama
Two weeks ago some news dropped about the administrator of my mastodon instance. I tweeted thusly:
There’s news about mstdn.ca’s admin allegedly stealing money from a community league in Edmonton. I’m an innocent-until-proven-guilty guy, but just to be safe, I’m going to grab my archive for safe keeping.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/inglewood-league-lawsuit-missing-funds-9.7136933
@Chad, the admin, posted something about it at first, but deleted the tweet and went radio silent. We were supposed to have a “state of the instance” meeting the weekend after the news came out, but he cancelled it (and, to be fair, I don’t blame him). After nine days he returned to tweeting, mostly about the Artemis 2 mission.
Like I said at the time, I’m an innocent-until-proven-guilty person. I think he’s generally done a good job. He’s been good at communicating with the community; he repatriated all our data (take that, US gummint!); and the latency issues have gone away since moving out of the cloud. On the downside, the server is now running at his house.
I think I’m going to give him a little longer to make some official statement. I support the goal of having a big instance for Canadian normies (like me, I guess). But the situation isn’t as stable as I’d like, and the instance was down for two hours today.
So… meet my new alternate Mastodon account! If mstdn.ca goes belly up, or I decide it’s time to jump ship, you should be able to find me at https://socialbc.ca/@nigelsezyarr .
PS: This post is worth reading on the subject: https://ottawa.place/@erin/116276010389150563
PPS: There is more news! He’s denied the allegations, and claims that it’s a software error.
I’m still waiting on an official announcement to the community, but it strikes me as plausible. Hopefully a third party will be able to review the accounting and determine culpability.