Is it possible to use a hosting service I'm already paying for (strato.nl) and a domain I've already bought to host a Mastodon/Pixelfed instance? All the websites that encourage me to selfhost advertise a new hosting service to me with the price in dollars.
Furthermore, is it possible to start an account on this instance that can be followed via either Mastodon or Pixelfed and vice versa, or are they just unrelated? I can see accounts from pixey.org on my Mastodon Android app and I know you can post to Lemmy via Mastodon but I'm unsure on how it goes the other way.

Sorry if I've made your eyes roll but we all shat green once.

Edit: very happy with the responses, thanks all.

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[–] halm@leminal.space 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

is it possible to start an account on this instance that can be followed via either Mastodon or Pixelfed

I just looked up your Lemmy profile in my Mastodon app and it looks like I can follow you at least. There's no visible post history though, so that might be a blank?

and vice versa

I'm not aware of any user follow feature in Lemmy? It's all centred around community subscriptions AFAIK. That doesn't mean it isn't technically possible — it's the same protocol as Mastodon etc — but if there is no UI option to follow each other, the question is sort of moot.

[–] thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The blank feed is just because nobody from your Mastodon server was following this account yet. Works the same as following any other new-to-your-server Masto account in that respect, but it should start showing new posts made since you followed.

[–] halm@leminal.space 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sheesh, Lemmy does have opinionated federation, huh?

[–] thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

It's how both platforms (and I assume the rest of fedi) work. If you follow an account from Mastodon, that your server has never seen before, it'll be blank until new posts are made. That goes for other Mastodon accounts, Lemmy communities / users, Pixelfed accounts, PeerTube channels, etc etc.

If you subscribe to a Lemmy community, and your Lemmy server has never seen that community before, same thing. Blank until new posts.

It caused a lot of confusion and tech support last summer but now that most servers know about most other ones I guess it's not as common to run into these days :D