Installing Mastodon with Docker Compose on Ubuntu 16.04

Mastodon is a decentralised free and open source alternative to Twitter. It is part of the OSocial “Fediverse” of federate-able messaging technologies, and is a very impressive, capable application. You join the “Fediverse” by signing up to Mastodon instance run by someone you trust. If you want to create your own, it’s not hard. This is how you do it on a virtual server running Ubuntu Linux 16.04 using Docker Compose, Nginx, and Let’s Encrypt. Go forth and populate the Fediverse!