Who do Mastodon's boosters believe is going to be installing and running Mastodon servers?
http://demo.fedilist.com/instance?q=&ip=&software=mastodon&r...
One reason, so that communities wouldn't get diluted. The other, it's expensive to run this.
> it's expensive to run this
As the hype about Mastodon spiked after Musk bought twitter, I looked at it to see if I could set up an instance, just to experiment. I'm an experienced programmer and systems administrator. After perusing the requirements and installation process, I decided that it was too much work for a little one-person experiment. This is why I ask about who is running instances. Yes, I had a strong hunch it would be all nerds, but I didn't expect it to be require so much sophistication and outlay. One very dedicated person could certainly set up and run an instance, but most likely any instance of moderate popularity is going to require a team.
>The costs were already ~$35/month even with reserved instances; back-of-the-envelope is that the new costs would be in the ballpark of ~$50/month.
https://toot.cafe/@nolan/109295574721909717
toot.cafe is #216 (by MAU) in the list above, MAU=315 - there's a data point.
Was that the original Mastodon? That does have a reputation of being faffy to install and resource-hungry. Pleroma is much easier and less resource-hungry. Even I managed to spin up a Pleroma server without any trouble.
> most likely any instance of moderate popularity is going to require a team.
It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users will, surely?
Likely. I didn't investigate alternative implementations.
> It'll need a team for coverage of moderation, support, perhaps 24/7 ops - but then anything with a lot of users will, surely?
I'm under the impression that the claims of Mastodon include "self-moderation" and, because of its supposed decentralization, 24/7 uptime is not needed for any one instance. I have been imagining it like torrents, where no single node matters. Once the initial seeding is complete, the content lives across many instances. If it's not like that, then claims for its decentralization are highly overblown.
That's "the instances moderate themselves", really, not "the users moderate themselves". With large numbers of users, you'll need assigned moderators.
> because of its supposed decentralization, 24/7 uptime is not needed for any one instance
Not sure where you've got that idea - decentralisation just means that I can talk to other instances from mine. But if mine is down, I can't log into another one with my account details and carry on Just Like That.
> If it's not like that, then claims for its decentralization are highly overblown.
If you're understanding "decentralised" to mean "seeded like a torrent", yeah, it'll seem highly overblown but at the same time it'd be very wrong.
Similar to email - for a long time somebody in a university basement had been running those and now it's google, Microsoft and a bunch of smallers or selfhosted where you can pick the offering you like.
It is great.
Lots of fly by night servers, stood up by (probably well meaning) people that have no idea if how hard it is to run and administer a server like that. Point in fact the "Mastodon.technology"(MT) server
If you read the heartfelt post from the MT owners/op on why it had to be shutdown. How much it took of his life to run it, and the choices he made. It doesn't matter that a new "like that" MT server is being stood up as a replacement. The MT server admins post shows the burden of running a server like that. For free (unless Patreon'ed I guess).
Activity Pub is a well designed protocol, but to my eye it has some major warts(). Add in it's decentralized nature and it shows how hard it will be to institute major changes, even if the community supported it.
I'd like to find a nice, professionally run Mastodon server, with clear rules and a believable investment in infrastructure and people. Absent that, I certainly can't see myself advocating for it, it recommending it to others. Shame too.
() Lack of encryption, lack of non-server discovery, lack of consistent, user controled server migration.p