technical note about this tech as I see some confusion/misconceptions:
Admins of your instance have complete control over your account. Really, we can read all the posts (including DMs) and we can even impersonate/hack your account with ease.
Make sure you trust your admins.
Here on toot.cat we have a CoC that applies to both admins and non admins. Admins are expected to abide by the CoC and not oppress users as well.
@polymerwitch or don't trust anybody. never. ever.
@Moustache yep. running your own instance is a totally fine thing to do. I'll even help anyone get one setup :)
@polymerwitch why not yeah. up for some tuts ? toot.
@Moustache I would start with the mastodon github:
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon
I've heard of people having great success running an instance on a raspberry pi. If/when you run into issues just ping me questions and I'll see if I can help :)