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Comment by Sithwuth | Hacker News Reader

If you're thinking of trying Mastodon, I would recommend joining an interest-specific or locality-specific server rather than one of the general purpose servers, because the local community is likely to be stronger and more engaged. You can always jump ship later if you find it's not your thing

Some examples:

- https://fosstodon.org for FOSS - https://infosec.exchange for infosec - https://sfba.social for the bay area

There's a map of locality-specific instances here: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mastodon-near-me_828094

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Of possible interest to some:

> Please consider joining @mastodon.acm.org, a community for #computing researchers & practitioners to connect & exchange ideas with each other, whether you are an ACM member or not.

https://mastodon.acm.org/invite/FbXaxAHg

Last time I looked into Mastodon (a couple years ago), I found a small, specific community that piqued my interest. Months later, the owner of the instance lost interest and closed it. In the end I never registered, but, what would have happened if I did and started to use it in my day to day? Would I wake up one day to find out that I no longer have a Mastodon account?

I feel the response might be something akin to "what would happen if you have a fastmail account and then fastmail closes?". If that's the case, I see absolutely no reason to choose a small instance, just for the sake of reliability and trust in its continued operation.

I agree with you. Mastodon does make it easier to migrate between users. ActivityPub (or is it Mastodon-specific?) has something built in to broadcast account migration announcements, supports account aliases, carry followers over, etc.

It's better than email in that regard.

This is an issue addressed by the Mastodon Server Covenant: https://joinmastodon.org/covenant

The Covenant includes a commitment from server admins to give users at least 3 months of advance warning in case of shutting down

That's an agreement with no teeth, they can just shut it down without warning, and then what do you do.

If this is very important to you, then you should find a server admin that you trust, such as a friend or a fellow industry professional.

You can also use a paid instance like https://cloudisland.nz/ or set up your own using a hosted service like masto.host

Any techie on HN could run a one-person instance. Mastodon itself is fat, but Pleroma/Akkoma and Misskey are smaller, for instance. I know someone who's writing software for a one-person server in Rust that is intended to deploy as a single binary file.

The problem you describe is real, though, and it's the least friendly thing about Mastodon for new users.

I'd pick a large instance to start with, and move at your leisure.

I'm camped out on a friend's server right now, he said it was strictly for amusement but he's having a whale of a time being a Mastodon admin. When he says he'll definitely give us 2mo notice if he gets sick of it, I know I can trust him on that. That sort of thing.

is the Rust dude on github? I'd like to help

Im very surprised that, among techies, there aren't more people running their own instance as a solo user, so that they can own the entire username including the domain name.

It's what I did for myself (Follow me! @jerome@leclan.ch), following Simon Willison's post: https://til.simonwillison.net/mastodon/custom-domain-mastodo...

"Notice: due to the recent influx of traffic, new subscriptions are closed." https://masto.host/

"hi! there's been a huge wave of new members and new instances recently, and that's a Lot of work. i am tired and especially won't be very available in the next months for health reasons, so i won't be accepting new instances for a while." https://fedi.monster/

"Due to overwhelming demand, registrations are currently closed." https://cloudplane.org/

A lot of users on these are opening up public instances, rather than their own. I don't see a huge amount of "host mastodon for yourself on your own domain" people.

I went this route (via https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/mastodon - I would have used masto.host otherwise). Im keeping an eye on Takahe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33731739) as hosting mastodon is kind of expensive, for the type of use I make of it.

I too self host my instance. I opted to use Pleroma (https://pleroma.social/) for a backend to interact with the fediverse because of the easier setup and lower hosting requirements.

It’s been working for a few years now and (luckily) I never had major incidents.

It’s very refreshing to be in full control of one’s data (compared to the centralised experience with other socials like Twitter and Facebook).

I considered Pleroma, but opted to use Mastodon because DO had a ready-made droplet.

I will likely switch to Takahe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33731739) as soon as it's a little more ready, for the reasons you describe.

Speaking from three years’ experience on a single-user instance, Mastodon just isn’t designed with this use in mind. Having the custom domain is neat but for now comes at the cost of an awkward and isolated experience.

Some of that could be improved with UI changes but to address it satisfactorily probably requires the server to do some proactive crawling beyond what’s dropped in your inbox.

For just ownership of identity keep an eye on this issue:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2668

One's own or a small instance with a few friends is suitable for people who are high profile who post challenging content. People will follow them from anywhere and visibility will be gained that way. Some high profile people do not want to be subject to the whims of moderators. Examples include every politician and many journalists. If you are not a high profile publisher, you will likely experience a bit of isolation with your own instance.

https://sigmoid.social/ for AI/machine learning.

It was cool seeing https://mathstodon.xyz/ on the HN front page recently.

I really like the idea of different organizations running their own instances. You don't need an overbearing, exhaustive and centralized system of verification for journalists when something like WAPO or NY Times can run an instance for their employees, much like how email works.

Edit: A lot of journalists just learned about the value of owning their distribution platform now too lol

Fosstodon was just banned from Twitter too, but that should not stop you from joining it. It looks like Twitter will be playing a game of whack a mole as we launch more instances.

This assumes one cares about the local community aspect of Mastodon. Granted many people do in which case your advice is spot on. But if you're just looking for a pure Twitter replacement, it doesn't matter. In fact you might be better off on one of the big players as they're probably less likely to be fly-by-night.

It would be nice if new users were simply assigned a big, generic server (like in many MMOs) and then later had the option to seek out and find a niche server. The vast, vast majority of new users wouldn't know or care either way.

That's more or less what _happens_; people join mastodon.social and then move.

I can confirm this is what I did. I started on mastodon.social, then eventually moved to a smaller instance when I got jealous of their local timeline. Then I'm now hosting my own server in the closet.

> In fact you might be better off on one of the big players as they're probably less likely to be fly-by-night.

The biggest advantage of a big instance like mastodon.social is that account discovery and following are much easier when the accounts are on the same instance of you. Otherwise, you have to do a lot of copy and paste into search fields.

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