@PurpCat @kirby those two servers definitely courted people banned from Twitter. I attempted to try pump.io (the thing Evan P one of the authors of ActivityPub made that almost killed the network) before my GNU Social server. I was and am very interested in freedom and decentralization which was my primary motivation. SPC started as a strong free speech instance that basically banned violent threats, doxing and loli, sealion didn't. SPC has since created more rules on perceived and real harassment. we absorbed a lot of users early on from another shitposting server named gnutan.xyz that went defunct after a database crash. I'll try to add more facts as I remember them.