Notes on running a single-person Mastodon server
jvns.ca
jvns.ca
services = {
elasticsearch = {
enable = true;
package = pkgs.elasticsearch7;
dataDir = "/persist/elasticsearch";
};
mastodon = {
enable = true;
configureNginx = true;
localDomain = domain;
smtp.fromAddress = email;
elasticsearch.host = "localhost";
#extraEnvFiles = [ "/persist/mastodon/secrets.env" ];
};
nginx = let dir = "/persist/nginx";
in {
enable = true;
recommendedProxySettings = true;
recommendedTlsSettings = true;
recommendedOptimisation = true;
recommendedBrotliSettings = true;
virtualHosts."${domain}" = {
enableACME = false;
sslCertificate = "${dir}/cfcert.pem";
sslCertificateKey = "${dir}/cfkey.pem";
kTLS = true;
extraConfig = ''
ssl_verify_client on;
ssl_client_certificate ${dir}/authenticated_origin_pull_ca.pem;
'';
};
};
postgresql = {
settings = {
shared_preload_libraries = "pg_stat_statements";
"pg_stat_statements.track" = "all";
"pg_stat_statements.max" = 10000;
track_activity_query_size = 2048;
};
};
postgresqlBackup = {
enable = true;
compression = "zstd";
backupAll = true;
location = "/persist/postgresbackup";
};
};The whole post is basically showing pretty much features lacking that are otherwise quintessential for social media. Can't see posts, can't see replies, can't see trends, can't search etc. I mean at this point why even use it? It's like having a Ford Mustang in your garage that doesn't have tires and steering wheel but hey that V8 engine is sure nice.
I almost wish I'd never made a personal site and just done GitHub pages, even DokuWiki in the cloud isn't perfect.
If your preferred experience of social media is sitewide trending stories, or searching for topics, single-person Mastodon servers aren't a good fit for you. If, like Julia Evans, you have both a large audience and a network of people you talk to on the regular, it's probably pretty OK.
If Mastodon succeeds (I'm rooting for it), I expect single-person servers, delivered by hosting providers like Masto.host (but a generation or two away, like Blogger vs. the first generation of blog software) to be the normal way people use it.
At this point I think most people who been online long enough have a network that’s been sustained across many different platforms. Federation is great for these sorts of people when it’s used in the way that you’ve described.
Centralization still has its use as a meeting ground. The “public square” concept can still apply, but the thing is that it’s unhealthy to spend all of your time there and private/controlled gatherings are people can get a break and cultivate more unique bonds. Mastodon is interesting because it gives people the option to have both (public square or private hall).
"OK, but I made the square tyres myself and that is all that matters to me.
I also don't need rear view mirrors either because they are far too distracting."
The plugin is maintained directly by Automattic, as a plus:
https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/03/17/making-the-social-web-...
> I chose to run a Mastodon server (instead of some other ActivityPub implementation) because Mastodon is the most popular one. Good managed Mastodon hosting is readily available, there are tons of options for client apps, and I know for sure that my server will work well with other people’s servers.
I did try setting up the ActivityPub plugin for Wordpress and was not successful in getting other ActivityPub servers to talk to it. It's been a while and Automattic now contributes to the plugin so it might be worth a second try.
Edit: gave it a second try and it seems to work without any fuss.
I can understand that most of the trending stuff might want to be instance isolated, or somewhat curated. But on a one person instance last time I looked, news for example was horrible because I had to actively approve sources every time. Perhaps this has changed. The other thing I noticed was that trending posts didn't work.
But hearing that you can't see another instances posts or replies properly without doing extra work, sounds like a huge oversight. For me decentralized social needs to at least allow me to look at all the posts or replies.
As she mentions, this might be a weird artifact of some servers apparently imposing a blanket block on single-user servers. I have an account on a large server and I can see profiles of users on other servers without issue.
I feel like there's a group of users who are very against anything that might bring MORE users into their service of choice. So for mastodon, it's things like fedibuzz, and recently on Lemmy (at least on android) it's the Sync App coming out.
The Lemmy situation was a very polished very good former reddit app, which is now a Lemmy app, seems to have upset a lot of people because its "Not Open Source". Which I can understand, but I get the feeling the pushback is basically the fear that MORE users will come to Lemmy now that the experience is nicer.
The third thing is that the more I use bluesky, and the more I see these same kinds of infighting or issues come up in Masto/Lemmy .. the more I realise that perhaps BSKY is just the better longterm choice for me.
Now back to the main point.
I kind of WANT some way to discover new users, or topics, or anything discovery related, and having your own Masto instance just seems to nerf those things. I'm happy that fedibuzz exists, and I'm happy that there's a kind of trending posts/news in Masto. But It needs to be better if it wants to survive. The average user will not put the kinds of effort in to FIND new people that exist elsewhere.
So users join larger instances, because theres discovery features there. But then the Local feed is just not great. The other side of this is single user instances, and those aren't great either.
> I use masto.host for Mastodon hosting, and it’s been great so far. I have nothing interesting to say about what it’s like to operate a Mastodon instance because I know literally nothing about it. Masto.host handles all of the server administration and Mastodon updates, and I never think about it at all.
In addition to that it seems that they've opted for the top-end package, which seems like it'd be overkill with just a single-user onboard.
That said, seems like there are some pretty significant Mastodon limits even if you let someone else do the heavy-lifting.
> Account migration does move over your followers
Some serious design blunders. Is this fixable like the other issues like invisible replies or is a forever limitation of the system ?
I’ve since spun up a vm to run voyager as my Apollo replacement, connecting to my local lemmy as my Reddit replacement.
Both work pretty seamless with other larger federated instances, and I got to have fun setting it up.
Even got to post how, on the lemmy, which I can share out to other lemmy communities.
It’s all far nicer and more integrated than I initially imagined.
It's currently using 6GB of storage on media. It is currently set to autodelete, but I assume could grow quite a bit.
I can't say Icve noticed any performance issues, however, I suspect I'm a lighter user.