12.9K new users on mastodon.social this week. Don’t know off-hand how the numbers for the fediverse at large look
It’s now up to 18.8K new users this week. For reference, growth was about 1K per week for a long time.

Hope to see more Mastodon servers pop up to share the load!

If you want your server to be advertised on joinmastodon.org, check out joinmastodon.org/covenant for conditions and instructions (but please mind I won’t be able to process submissions until at least tomorrow when I get home)

@Gargron I was thinking of moving to my Metalhead.club account, it that helps.
@Gargron in Due Time.
More Mastodon Servers will pop up. It is unrealistic to expect to see the results before the appropriate gestation period. πŸ˜‚

@Gargron I would like to host the Mastodon instance for my friends and family. Is there a Mastodon AWS (EC2, S3 etc.) guide you can recommend? e.g. blog post, notes etc.

Also, will AWS free tier be enough at the beginning (1-2 users)?

Thanks!

@Gargron A major issue amounting to the less new instances is the somewhat cumbersome Mastodon setup for a new instance.

It would really help if we could provide Mastodon setup guides for common cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure etc.

@rootkea @Gargron If you want a small and cheap instance I recommend Pleroma (pleroma.social), it's compatible with Mastodon but much easier to set up
Pleroma β€” a lightweight fediverse server

@mewmew @rootkea @Gargron How bad is the setup for Mastodon anyway?
@rootkea @Gargron @mastohost starts at like 5 euros a month for a personal instance with a few users
@liaizon @rootkea @Gargron @mastohost Using mastohost defeats the purpose of decentralization
@mewmew @Gargron @mastohost @rootkea this is a an unhelpful hot take. It certainly does not defeat the purpose. I agree that in a perfect world we should all host our own instance but that is not an option for many people. mastohost is has shown to be very responsive. and also you can move your instance to self hosted later on as long as you own your domain.
@liaizon @Gargron @mastohost @rootkea it's not intended to be a "hot take". There's not much of a good reason to use mastohost since you're still required to follow their moderation policy, there's a limit to how much you can customize, and you don't gain the experience of running an instance. You're better off joining a mega server that at least doesn't charge you.

@mewmew for that statement to be true, it would require that you couldn’t start a server without masto.host approval.

On a decentralized network each node can fully run without contact with a central authority. Masto.host doesn’t change that.

You can move your instance in and out of Masto.host and the centralization of power is the same as running Mastodon on AWS, Digital Ocean or even if you run your own server you rely on the ISP central network

@Gargron @rootkea @liaizon

@mastohost @Gargron @rootkea @liaizon I agree, I don't think your service is evil or anything

however, I think that if many instances are being run by the same person, in the same location, it's not much better than everyone being on the same instance

@mewmew I understand your point but the same would happen if most instances were hosted on Digital Ocean or another hosting provider

So, saying that Masto.host defeats the purpose of decentralization is not very accurate IMO, since I run a small part of the network. Probably there are more Mastodon instances depending on CloudFlare than on me.

@Gargron @rootkea @liaizon

@mastohost @Gargron @rootkea @liaizon Yeah, I agree with you, if everyone suggested the DigitalOcean guide to newcomers I would have the same issue.

I don't think people necessarily shouldn't use your service, only that they should consider other options beforehand.

@mewmew @mastohost @Gargron @liaizon @rootkea Just read over the install guide for Mastodon. Honestly, doesn’t look hard or really more complex than any other similar package.

Is there some other overhead to running Masto?

@wolfie @mewmew @Gargron @rootkea @mastohost People who have never used the command like and only have a phone can not self host mastodon. there are many reasons for wanting a 3rd party host.
@liaizon @wolfie @mewmew @Gargron @rootkea Digital Ocean offers one click install of Mastodon. Never tested it but it’s there.

@mewmew the big difference is that contrary to centralized software, you can change your provider to one that meets your needs.

@Gargron @rootkea @liaizon

@Gargron Do you have any suggestions regarding promoting a server to local residents?
@Gargron people from India are moving to #Mastodon from #twitter because of the biased activities of #twitter. Will Mastodon able to handle it????
@Gargron when is mobile application coming for mastodon?
@Fullpr0
There are a number of mobile applications now. I'm using Fedilab for example.
@Fullpr0 @Gargron there are many mobile apps. they are just not called mastodon. check out #Fedilab on Android or #Amaroq or #Mast on iOS
@liaizon @Fullpr0 @Gargron Apparently #Amaroq development currently stalled... also the author @eurasierboy hasn't had any activity in quite a while now.. Does anybody know what's going on?
@Gargron now that #indians are flocking here, will there be any update to code of conduct specially around casteism and related slurs?
@Enthupatani Yes, as soon as I arrive home
@Gargron @Enthupatani Thanks for the positive reply on the query about the issue of casteism. Seems you are aware about the seriousness of such issue.
@Enthupatani @Gargron wow the reputation we indians have outside is incredible..lol
@Enthupatani @Gargron We need to make our own instances, it is unreasonable to expect moderators on mastodon.social and mstdn.social to be educated on our issues.