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Comment by ASalazarMX | Hacker News Reader

The most crucial decision when joining Mastodon is choosing the most friendly instance. I have a strong interest in interacting with cybersecurity professionals, so infosec.exchange was perfect for me, either browsing subscribed or local posts. Browsing all is something I do only when I'm bored, because many posts are not what I'd like to see. You can always migrate your account if you want.

https://instances.social/

That being said, BlueSky is simpler and easier because there's no real federation yet, and even if they have a "Discovery" algorithm, you get many options to control what you want to see. It's feels great, like Twitter before their 2012(ish?) IPO.

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> The most crucial decision when joining Mastodon is choosing the most friendly instance.

Consider using a self-hosting service, like https://togethr.party/ , to have your own instance on your own domain. Much like email, you should never be beholden to another party for your identity; your hosting service should be an invisible detail that can change without anyone interacting with you needing to notice.

I've watched several instances shut down over the years, and have never once regretted the decision to have an instance on my own domain. My social network handle is now the same as my email address, with an extra @ in front.

I regretted my decision to self host. It’s expensive (for what it is), there are federation issues with some instances, some admins don’t like smaller unknown instances, it requires a fair bit of active management to keep an instance healthy, and you can’t migrate post history.

A good self-hosting service should provide full access to extract all your data, such that you can import it into a different service later.

I'm paying ~$7/month to own my own fediverse identity, which seems cheap to me.

You're right about federation issues, though that's more a limitation of the fediverse protocols and fediverse software that really needs fixing. Fediverse instances don't automatically fetch and show all replies to posts you see, even if it knows they exist, unless your server is already fetching other things from the server hosting those posts. So it's a little harder to see other people's replies, which contributes to the problem of 20 people replying with the same answers because they can't see that other people have already replied.

Large instances work around that because everyone's already talking to at least one account on that server.

I hope those limitations get fixed someday, but for now they're fundamental to the fediverse.

You can extract your data, but you can't import your posts on another Mastodon instance. It's fixable, but thorny.

Personally, I think Bluesky is a mix of NIH with a dash of wanting to be a central point of control, that is doomed in the long run - anything that works well for Bluesky can be copied, but the real benefit for the Fediverse in the long run is that Mastodon is just one of many services, or types of services. Every new service gets to hook into an existing network instead of starting from scratch.

> I'm paying ~$7/month to own my own fediverse identity, which seems cheap to me.

I very much agree with you in owning your identity on this sort of thing, but I wouldn't pay $7/mo in order to participate in any social network.

I have my own email domain, and I can host it myself, or have someone else host it for me, on shared infrastructure. Fastmail charges me ~$4/mo, and that's for email, something anyone on the internet requires in order to interact with online services. I think $4/mo for a communications necessity is reasonable, and there are cheaper (even free) providers if I wanted to go that route. $7/mo for a social network is nuts.

I'm not sure how services like togethr.party work, but is it safe to assume that they have to spin up a completely new copy of the server software for each domain? That seems like a big problem, and is probably why this is so expensive.

I recently set up my own Matrix instance (using Synapse) and found it to be pretty wasteful, resource-wise. This is a solved problem with email servers, where one server can host as many domains as you have storage and processing power for; not sure why the chat/social platforms haven't caught up architecture-wise.

FWIW, $7/month is a figure for running a whole server just for your domain. Mastodon absolutely sucks for single-user instances. I offer Takahe hosting for $39/year if you want to use your own domain, or Mastodon + Matrix + Funkwhale + Lemmy for $29/year if you just want an account on the communick servers.

> though that's more a limitation of the fediverse protocols and fediverse software that really needs fixing

I don't believe ATProto has the same issues, and I believe it would take quite a rearchitecture of ActivityPub to solve.

> such that you can import it into a different service later

This is the key issue. There is no way to import posts in Mastodon without manually fudging the database (which I also had to do when running my own instance). As another commenter mentioned, it's a tricky issue, in large part because it's not part of the federation protocol.

Bluesky solves this by separating the storage from the other parts of the distributed system, such that you don't need to move your storage to change your identity, hosting, moderation, etc. Keeping them independent is a smart move.

> It’s expensive (for what it is)...

I host my instance on an always free VM, don't put much work toward maintenence, and haven't had a problem with federation. Post migration is not really a thing from a shared instance, I don't think, so yeah, that sucks.

Honestly, the most expensive part for me is the domain, because I shelled out for a spiffy premium domain. But I'm weird.

Oracle Cloud Free Tier ARM instances are really good, I don’t host Mastodon on mine but I assume you can, of course you still have to pay for a domain name but you can get a cheap one

>> My social network handle is now the same as my email address

Spammers sure love you :)

>> to have your own instance on your own domain

Domain is likely linked to your identity. What might look like an innocent *eet today, might end you on a wrong list down the road.

The user who's username is a first and last name probably worries less about people finding out their identity than someone who's username is EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK. But someone who's technically savvy and privacy conscious could buy a new domain name with crypto, one not linked to their identity, if that's a concern.

That's true, I paid crypto for my namecheap domain, still easy to track it to my real identity.

Fediverse instance software is immature. I self host lots of stuff but I've tried 3 times to self host a fediverse instance and stopped all three times. I get things running, but the amount of care and feeding software like Mastodon requires is unacceptable for someone like me who doesn't have time to babysit server software.

> The most crucial decision when joining Mastodon is choosing the most friendly instance.

I was very disappointed to find out that whatever instance you choose can essentially hold your identity and content hostage.

I'd been hoping for something where my identity comes from a private key that I could take elsewhere.

"something where my identity comes from a private key that I could take elsewhere" is a literal technical description of how Nostr works. Relays/servers are basically dumb pipes. You own your data and can repost to different relays (and encouraged to do so.) Problem is if your key is lost or stolen, you're kinda screwed.

I looked into running my own instance, but.... It was non-trivial.

Yeah, self-hosting the whole stack can be a lot (like Mastodon). I only signed up via the Primal mobile app and left it at that. Private key stays local.

Except Nostr is mainly populated by crypto bros, that's not something I'd like to read on a daily basis.

But not really. I only ever want to see people I follow in my feed. And I can follow people from wherever, not just my instance. So the decision of what instance I chose was inconsequential.

Mastodon allows you move instances with minimal effort. You can redirect your old profile to the new one in another instance, or permanently move it keeping your follows and followers.

No one there wants to hold your information hostage, you can always export it, and while it doesn't support importing, you can repost it through their API if you really want to.

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

I may have been misremembering Lemmy instead.

> You can redirect your old profile to the new one

Is that true even when the reason for the change is because the instance operator wants to silence you? If you can't put up a metaphorical "Go Here Instead" sign, could they also stop you from "proving" that your new home is legitimate and that you're the same author as before?

> You can redirect your old profile to the new one in another instance, or permanently move it keeping your follows and followers

But you lose all the posts and interactions. Most importantly, you are not keeping your identity, but merely creating a new account with a copy of your follower/following collections.

> No one there wants to hold your information hostage,

Tell that to a friend of mine who got banned from their instance for committing the crime of being an Ethereum developer. The admin suspended his account and didn't let him go back or initiate the migration process.

A redirect is a pale imitation of a real move.

Good news! You just described how Bluesky works

Except for that, as discussed in TFA, Bluesky isn't actually decentralized (yet).

The rational thing to do for someone who (1) thinks of themselves as a human being first and something else second is to join mastodon.social and (2) cares about visibility (why else are you on social?) is to join the biggest instance you can find.

Most notably people can only follow hashtags from accounts that are on their server so if you insist on joining some micro server please save yourself the hassle of putting hashtags on things.

I don't think myself as a human being is the right thing to upload to the internet! I'll stay right here thanks.

Instead I join specific interest-related communities that offer what I can't find in real life: the one person in the world that's had and overcome the same problem with their table saw.

I’m on social to interact with folks I know. Visibility to anyone outside that circle is the _last_ thing on my mind.

Okay, then don't grandstand and downvote on here and just get on some group chats instead? This is the kind of overemotional comment that degrades social networks anyway.

Eh, there are some aspects of the human condition I'd rather opt out for the time being. Strangely, I find Facebook and WhatsApp more useful to keep in touch with people I care about, and likely won't join the Fediverse any time soon.

if you care too much about visibility I think mastodon will be disappointing. They just don't want to be popular, it feels like it's designed to be antipopular.

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