Dave Troy Nov 13, 2022
Another design consideration re: Mastodon is that it works well for ephemeral asynchronous communications, but for many reasons should not be counted on as an archival resource. Media attachments are periodically purged and may not be available after a week, or a month, etc. While some servers may try to preserve content forever, this may be costly and unsustainable. Creators, researchers should treat this as an ephemeral resource and make provisions for self-archiving anything important.
Show threadJKNov 13, 2022

How well does it scale if each person has their own instance server?

@davetroy

Show threadnscrut Nov 13, 2022
@jamienk @davetroy each person still has to perform configuration, upkeep and pay for storage, if anything I think that is more likely to result in much more data loss long term.
Show threadJKNov 13, 2022
@enscroot @davetroy You'd buy a "wall wart" with an SSD drive ($100 for a Pi and 1TB?) and get some kind of backup plan ($10/month) -- the config part is where Moz would build a friendly GUI, no? With instructions for iPhone Android and desktop. The whole thing would be a companion for your phone or laptop...
Show threadDave Troy Nov 13, 2022
@jamienk @enscroot it's an interesting idea. It probably could work with the software as-is. Might be worth giving it a try. Possibly someone already has. You'd need a domain name and a firewall rule on your home router too, to open a port to it, and you'd have to dedicate port 443 to it the way things are setup now, I think.
Show threadJKNov 14, 2022

@davetroy @enscroot The email server might be an issue (I know it's hard to stay off spam lists etc), and the DNS, port-forwarding, etc. I also have learned that something like OnlyOffice (Free software) is hard to set up and seems to req heavy processing.

But it does seem like a do-able project for a non-profit: offer services (like backup, dynDNS, email send-through, etc.) to supplement custom hardware and tuned software

Show threadDave Troy 
@jamienk @enscroot Mailgun works pretty well for solving the SMTP piece. That's what I'm using and that's easier than building up a separate sender reputation, which these days is a totally horrendous task.
Nov 14, 2022 at 1:09amWeb