Centralized, COMMERCIAL Social Platforms are Getting Worse
Since 2022, commercial social platforms like Twitter/X, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, etc are making the experience worse for the users. They do things such as having poor moderation, putting features behind a paywall, and making the overall user experience horrible for everyone.
However, we are building an alternative.
Looking for an Alternative to Corporate Social Media with a Japanese Media/Culture focus?
Sakurajima is a Japanese media/culture fandom and creator community consisting of Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, WordPress, and our Xenforo Forums (alternate to Reddit forums), which allows you to connect with other Anime/Manga/Video Game/Japanese Media Fans and Bloggers in a non-toxic, safe, and inclusive space free from hate, harassment, and extremist ideologues. Also, independently operated by an Asian American.
Your gateway to the Japanese-Media Fandom and Creator Fediverse Space
The Fediverse is a decentralized social network that uses ActivityPub, an open standard to communicate between software that implements the standard through Federation. The Fediverse is not just Mastodon, but other apps that uses ActivityPub like Misskey, Firefish, IceShrimp, Sharkey, Akkoma, Pixelfed, WordPress (with the ActivityPub plugin), and more
Sakurajima provides a choice of a Mastodon and a Misskey/Sharkey server, giving users a choice to get into an Japanese Media focused and creator (Blogging, Podcasting, Art, Video, Live Streaming, etc) space, without the trolls, intolerant people, and extremists.
In addition, we also have an alternative to Instagram, Pixelfed.
What is Misskey?
Misskey is an open source decentralized Social Networking Software from Japan that uses ActivityPub, which can interact with Mastodon and other Fediverse software.
Sakurajima Social uses a soft fork of Misskey called Sakurakey (a soft fork based on Sharkey), which adds additional features like full migration (including post importing, including services like Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter)), Mastodon API compatibility, and more while still being based on the most recent version of Misskey (like Mastodon Glitch Social Fork)),
Misskey provides features that Mastodon currently doesn’t have yet such as quote posts, groups and more.
Misskey may be easier for users who used Twitter before because Misskey takes a lot of inspiration from Twitter, including the User Experience.
Our Misskey instance is sakurajima.social
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon is an open source social network platform that works like Twitter. However, it’s decentralized, meaning you can join any server and follow anyone from other servers, as long the instance doesn’t block access to that instance.
Mastodon instances are usually independently owned, not by any corporation or some egotistical millionaire. You are in full control of your data.
Sakurajima uses a soft fork called Glitch-Soc, which has additional features such as post formatting, themes, reactions, and more.
Our Mastodon instance is sakurajima.moe
Mastodon and Misskey Comparison
Mastodon and Misskey (our fork, Sakurakey) work similarly, but have few differences. Here is a summary.
| Mastodon (at Sakurajima) | Misskey (Sakurakey) | |
| Microblogging | Y | Y |
| Quote Posts | Y (Unofficial, Sakurajima Mastodon Only) | Y |
| Reactions | Y | Y |
| Following Hashtags | Y | N |
| Customizable Feeds (Antennas) | N | Y |
| Bubble Timeline (of Affiliated Servers) | Y | Y |
| Third Party API Support | Great | Good |
| Total Media Upload Limit | None | None |
| GIF Picker | Y | N (Y on the Optional Mastodon Frontend Only) |
Ditching Instagram? Want to share only photos and Videos?
We have a Japanese media/culture themed Pixelfed server at Usuzakuraya.
We Also Have Internet Forums
If the Fediverse isn’t your thing, we also have a forum community as well.
Free Anime/Manga Blog Hosting Too
We provide Anime/Manga Blog managed WordPress hosting for our active users in addition to those who want to create a site to show off their Japanese-inspired creations.
Our Features
Sakurajima has a bunch of features that makes it a better alternative to Twitter, Threads, and BlueSky.
Note: Asterisk indicates that this feature only applies to Mastodon.
Trusted and Safe
Unlike the Birdsite, Threads, and Bluesky, Sakurajima has strict moderation to make our online space safe and inclusive for everyone. We fully comply with the Mastodon Covenant to moderate both our Mastodon and Misskey servers against hate speech, harassment, and unpleasant materials, ensure the server is safely backed up when something goes wrong so nobody loses data, and make sure technical issues are resolved when the owner is not online.
In an event we have to shut down our services permanently (which we hope never happens), we will give three months notice for everyone to find a new server, download their user data and move to another server.
We have been around since Elon bought the Birdsite in late October 2022 and we have content creators using the platform along with fans of Japanese media. In addition, we also receive some financial support to keep our servers running for the long term. This should give everyone confidence the long term longevity of our platforms.
Community Rules
While we allow most types of content, there are some rules users are expected to follow to keep our place safe for everyone.
Autosharing Posts On Mastodon Tutorial↗
Own an Anime Blog and don’t know how to autoshare your blog posts on Mastodon. This tutorial will help you.
Auto Post to Mastodon ↗
Run a self-hosted WordPress blog or have a WordPress.com plan that support plugins. You can automatically share your posts on your Anime Blog with this plugin.
Third Party Clients↗
There are third party clients for Mastodon you can use on this instance.
Note: Not all Mastodon clients work on Sharkey/Misskey at Sakurajima Social
Community Supported
We do not rely on ads or funding from hedge funds and billionaires. While optional, you can support us by donating through Paypal, Ko-fi, or Patreon to keep the service running and free for everyone to use.
Community Updates
Stay up to date to any updates to our instance.
See our new home for Sakurajima Updates.
- As we know, AniBlogTracker (https://aniblogtracker.com) has went down since May 7th. This site allows you to see the latest posts from Anime and Manga blogs, news letters and Youtube channels. With this possibly gone, we have lost a good resource of the latest posts from creators. I am trying to reach out to the creator […]
- With half of the year almost gone, here are some recent updates and additions: Sakurajima Social is now updated, now based on 2025,4,0, which adds a bunch of new features, including the chat feature. Ivory now works on Sakurajima Social. The current fundraising progress is $347.82 out of $1284 (this is an estimate as not […]
- Spring is finally here, and here are some short updates Sakurajima is in fundraising mode. The goal is to make our services sustainable in the long term. So far, we are only part of the way of our goal. The end goal is to have most of our costs covered. If you can and enjoy […]
- We know that the next few years are going to be some tough ones. For a while, I have covered half the costs, and it's not necessarily a big deal, but given this year and wanting to make Sakurajima sustainable in the long run, I have decided to start a fundraising drive. As expected, I […]
- For a while now, our Pixelfed instance is only available for those who requested it and te process of account creation was done manually. Now, since the settings to send the emails are fixed, we are opening it for approval based registration. You must have an account on our servers or any servers on our […]