let me list two not federated options.

but both are self hosted.

• lobsters. one active instance is lobste.rs but i know of https://սարեան.ցանցառներ.հայ

• if you use gemini protocol, you probably know about it: bubble is a reddit like software. i know about two deployments, the original, by the author is at gemini://bbs.geminispace.org

users also can have their blog feeds on it.

xmpp (jabber)

i saw somewhere yesterday that it also removed siskin (or snikket? or both?) xmpp client.

yeah, i have a historical oberon compiler for palm pilot.

i am thinking of lora.

i use nfs. always. every minute my computer is online it has a mounted directory from my server.

via nfs and wireguard.

i tried lots of things but nfs which listens on wireguard ip is the best i ever achieved.

does mastodon have something like high priority/importance notifiication? i can imagine how such sms may come, but in order to get that notification via twitter or mastodon, what should you do? run the apps in background and check all notifs, like someone faved your food foto, and then you are like, okay, this wasn’t it.

i just don’t know how this works and really curious.

“smartphone” doesn’t matter. it is a computer that runs software. the only question is who controls that software? free/libre software is by definition one that you control. and what you described means that you dont control your device.

so advices: easy way is to just install lineage os or graphene or some other open source android version. you will control it. i dont advice to install google play services.

other advice: you can get a sony phone because it can run sailfish os. also i believe those are great. otherwise install open source android, lineage or something.

sailfish has android emulator (it costs money) but sailfish is not android. it is a linux/qt based system. very polished. not as polished as open source android, but it is fast, lightweight and beautiful. native sailfish apps arent feature rich but do you really need feature rich? then you can get more apps from fdroid store and use android emulation layer.

other, better but harder option: get a device which is well supported by postmarketos.

postmarketos has several user interfaces but neither of those is what you have used to. i believe it is the best option but you must prepare yourself to be able to change. most probably you wont have a working camera. thats ok, i live like that.