from abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 21 Apr 18:37
https://friendica.ginestes.es/objects/0a49108d-1068-0690-7775-c08830482647
The following was asked on a #Mastodon forum on #Reddit - I replied and a sort of converation started. I felt that it wa better to have the discussion where others with valuable inside could chip in so I have- with the OP’s permission posted the following:
For years I have the same question:
Is it useful to create your own Mastodon instance or any other fediverse instance?
Many admins say it is a lot of work and they put a lot of effort, money and energy in it. Some even close their instance after few years, because it is just too much.
After the new political development in the USA, the fediverse got a new wave of interested people from all over the world, but the question stays.
In my opinion it makes only sense if you already have a community, like, if you’re an influencer or part of an NGO or similar projects with several people, who will support you creating and maintaining it with money and own time.
What do you think and do you own an instance or work on one?
threaded - newest
If you don’t plan on supporting this for at least a few years I would say no.
If you don’t expect to have a decent local userbase I would say no (local in the sense of a common interest, e.g. it might be useful to host an instance for all members of even a small company if you expect a decent amount of posts).
If it’s just you and your family (let’s be honest: it’s just you) I would say no.
The fediverse can federate, but if everyone is using their own server it’s just a fancy peer to peer network.
@EarMaster I'm going to say that if you are doing it for wider family that might still be worth it (given that you can get a private stream and your network feed might be more relevant for other family members - But then it is a case of bringing your family along with you.. If you are doing other stuff for them (email, file sharing , device management - Then maybe an ActivityPub server becomes a bit of an addon
Useful? No. Profitable? No. Fun? For some people. That’s why they do it.
IMO no.
Small instances can have issues with federation and now showing all replies/content.
There’s also the aspect that you’ll need to moderate content stored on your server, if someone posts something illegal and your server caches it, you’re responsible for cleaning it up.
The reason to host your own instances is altruism. You help out the community with decentralisation and also absorb some of the bandwidth and storage costs from other instances. This is necessary for the Fediverse to survive.
But another instance also increases the required bandwidth and data usage for all other federated instances
Yes but if your instance holds a decent population then it’s a net benefit
😲
Just join some smaller instance not hosted in the US. That’s what I did, and it prevents centralization. I am super happy with my choice as the bigger instances may be getting defederated while the smaller ones kinda fly under the radar and the chances of getting caught in a collective responsibility for stuff that other users from your instance posted are smaller