@jonah the main problem is ssl / https is so hard-coded into mastodon. Self assigned certs will give an error that to most non tech people will think they're being hacked. And digicert is not worth it unless theres a decent sized community willing to chip in for the cost. Other than that its documented here https://docs.joinmastodon.org/administration/optional-features/#hidden-services
And login (as most things) works if ssl is disabled on a mastodon file as follows https://gist.github.com/hcmiya/40f3810108c954b3a24017a78844e0b6#gistcomment-2679350.
SSL is not needed for hidden services
@jonah It seems standalone as federation requires ssl. But in theory they could but everyone would have to run a dedicated fork that completely strips ssl or accept each other's self-assigned certs or the very unlikely scenario everyone pays for digicert certs.
@MasTorDon this is why I really want Let's Encrypt to start supporting .onion domains. Not Mastodon only necessarily, but there's a lot of use-cases where HTTPS is required.
@MasTorDon yeah I did see that documentation.
I'm less interested in serving this web interface over a .onion address, and more interested in the ability for this instance to federate with other onion-only instances (are there any?) but *that* is what is less documented.