documentation

I was wanting to host a Mastodon instance to use as a mail/chat/blog/publish/gallery service for myself, but based on an old (from 2017) official document(1) that I found, running a Mastodon instance doesn't come cheap. 1: https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/blob/9efa9b69d8dc4... Their new document stopped providing such information now. I wonder how things improved during the years, does it demands less RAM now? Long story: my plan was to put the instance on one of my Raspberry Pi which got 2GB of RAM. But based on the old information, 2GB of hardware RAM is dangerously close to the limit, so I waited to see if things improves somehow (say Ruby suddenly become more memory efficient, I can dream too).

so, would you mind showing any non-FANG, but write heavy site? Besides that, even the operation of most social networks should be very easy to be split into town-sized instances with batch-updates in-between instances (see mastodon specs https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni...). What actually costs a lot is constantly surveilling all user interactions, data-warehousing that and playing out ads. None of which is necessary, and a 20ct/per user/per month should cover the actual service nicely...

Most Mastodon instances cover bills with a handful of supporters on Patreon. Centralizing is what racks up the big dollar figures. Even mastodon.social only cost about $280/month to run as of mid 2018. https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni... It's not necessary for everyone to pay if the topology is right. They could have joined the growing ActivityPub fediverse and set up a managed hosting thing the way one of the major Mastodon contributors did. The centralized sites spend much of their money on marketing and making ad deals. You don't need that if the social network is a standard feature you bolt your software on to and don't depend on ads.

"This repository has been archived by the owner. It is now read-only." (https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni...) So where is it?

You and me both (however I still have a FB account for some reason). I keep on hearing about Mastadon but haven't dabbled. I have access to quite a lot of hardware and internets ... right ... deploy VM and let's have a play. https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation#running-mastodon

See here: https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni... For some reason Eugen didn't port everything to the new doc website.

I love Mastodon but the only thing stopping me from using it is the way they approach federation [0]. The "ideal" for me is to make an account on a centralized official Mastodon instance (with Keybase verification, if needed) and then be able to seamlessly join another instance without having to sign up for that instance separately to be a member -- and thus not having to make a per-instance account. That way my account is created once, and I can jump between other instances OAuth-style. I do like the fact that niche instances exist, but in my opinion it's better to be known as [username@mastodon.social] even when being a member of [@niche.social] much like how Disqus or Gravatar works, in principle. At least the option would be nice. [0] https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using...

I'm really happy to see more applications published using Rust (and Go). Without even looking, I know I'll be able to run Plume on commodity hardware. PHP, Ruby, and Java programs seem so wasteful when it comes to memory. Especially PHP and Ruby where re-using any of the codebase for a mobile/desktop app is often close to impossible. Consider the Plume install vs Mastodon (Ruby): - https://github.com/Plume-org/Plume/blob/master/DEVELOPMENT.m... - https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni...

Some notes on Mastodon resource requirements: https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Runni... Ta for bringing this to my attention. I'm ploughing through the docs ...

So currently, choosing Mastodon vs Pleroma boils down to what you care more about: performance/less complexity, or more features/maturity. Mastodon is really nice, but it's fairly intensive. Precompiling the rails/webpack assets in particular made my tiny VPS choke, even with 4GB of memory I believe. It also requires Sidekiq and other services [1]. Pleroma is newer and written in Elixir/Phoenix purely as an API. It only has itself as a dependency, and it's lean enough to run on a Raspberry Pi. It offers two frontends, pleroma-fe and mastofe, the latter is a port of Mastodon's UX. --- Features wise, Pleroma doesn't really have a lot beyond the basic functionality of subscribing to people, posting, etc. There aren't real moderation tools (yet), since it's mostly a weekend project for the core devs. Blocking instances requires an IP block st

I'd do what I generally do with reasonable questions: point the questioner at a FAQ and suggest they simply dive in and try it. https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using... https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using... This isn't rocket surgery. Or solving the homeless & mental health crises. Sign up at https://Mastodon.social (big main Engish-mostly instance), or I can vouch for https://toot.cat (run by a friend, Woozle). I'm @dredmorbius at multiple instances, though I mostly monitor mastodon.cloud (which has been increasingly flaky).

Mastodon has moderation tools[1] that allow administrators of a server to restrict not just users on their own server, but also how other users in the Fediverse can interact with their users. Users can also report content. [1]: https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/7f81350fe4fe...

I have only used mastodon via web browser and Tusky (android mobile app), and both are totally fine. However, here is a list of "known" apps/clients: https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using... If you're looking for term clients - on the above web page - look under the "Other clients" section; I assume "CLI" refers to terminal clients. Happy tooting, and cheers!

Among the inspirations for the software project's name: https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using...