Kelsey HightowerMastodon is the Linux of social media. The UX needs a little work but the momentum behind the project might help it overtake the other proprietary platforms.
While I can use Mastodon as is, I can't help myself from looking under the hood, and I'll be forever tempted to run my own server.
a*lfonso adriasol&@kelseyhightower@mastodon. its great to see the variety of implementations from raspberry pi, to rack in the living room, to cloud, all in a box, small cluster to large cluster. this is running redis postgres elasticsearch and all the tricks of the trade apply
₵ⱧⱤł₴ ⱤØ₥₱ NZ6F 🇺🇦💪🏻🇬🇱❤️@kelseyhightower I’m tempted to run my own instance…. for like a minute. But then I’ll move on to the next thing and it’ll atrophy. So for now, I’m happy letting someone else run it and pitching in $.
Oliver Libutzki@kelseyhightower 2023 - the year of Mastodon UI.
Jeff Markel@kelseyhightower Totally agree. But since it is meant to be a widely distributed, federated universe of systems, why NOT run your own? Limit membership to a manageably small number (friends, family, affinity group, whatever) and leave the bigger instances to those without the wherewithal - financial, technical, or logistical - to run their own.
Robin Vleij@kelseyhightower Why would you not run your own, it's simpler than most of your example cases you show in demos :-)
A few containers, some object storage and a CDN and voila: warm and fuzzy feelings of running your own stuff haha #selfhosted #mastoadmin
Thomas Lee ✅ 
@robin @kelseyhightower
Well - for a start, I have zero Linux skills. And what container knowledge I have is on Windows.
And these days, I just don't have the energy to learn a new platform well enough to administer it. I'll let others do a much better job.
Well - for a start, I have zero Linux skills. And what container knowledge I have is on Windows.
And these days, I just don't have the energy to learn a new platform well enough to administer it. I'll let others do a much better job.
@DoctorDNS @kelseyhightower Fair enough, some linux knowledge to spin up an instance somewhere and some knowledge to run containers is required (mixed with some DNS and security skills).
I was more reacting to Kelsey's "temptation" since I'm pretty sure he has the knowledge and energy 😂
@robin @kelseyhightower
i am pretty sure I have the DNS skills, but the rest is just something I will not do. For me, life is too short. That said, happy to watch! :-)
i am pretty sure I have the DNS skills, but the rest is just something I will not do. For me, life is too short. That said, happy to watch! :-)
Malcolm Bastien@kelseyhightower Once more services can make spinning up a Mastodon instance a one-button operation. It's gonna be wild.
𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕨 𝕣𝕖𝕚𝕟𝕓𝕠𝕝𝕕@malcolm @kelseyhightower I'm shocked there haven't been more hosted-services jumping into the fray with the demand. With Masto.host (and others) not taking on new subscribers, there seems to be a business opportunity.
I still need to work through the Digital Ocean/Mastodon tutorial, but I still have scars from running Wordpress Ops a decade ago. Still gunshy.
Jack@matthewreinbold @malcolm @kelseyhightower Not 100% what the UX of masto.host is, but what we need is a service for folks to create fediverse servers that looks something like how you create multiplayer gaming servers, I'm specifically thinking of minecraft realms. You have 0 knowledge of the underlying implementation - all you know is that you sign up for a service, you get a personal sandbox, you get a UI to admin that sandbox. It's entirely layer 7 and newbie friendly enough for non-engineers
Adam Hall 
🇳🇿 🇺🇸@kelseyhightower while I have removed my instance from external visibility, it’s still running internally so I can poke around. I hold onto unrealistic desires to actually operate it after I invest time hardening it and setting up appropriate backups and such 😂
Dan Shick
Sascha Siekmann 
@kelseyhightower I think what is most appealing to me from an architecture POV is the decentralization. Instead of an evil cat stroking overlord it's a more grassroots approach. I think this is what enables the organic community that naturally is attracted to places like infosec.exchange, e.g. I really like it here!
René Moser (resmo) レネ@kelseyhightower have you looked at https://pleroma.social? seems more minimalist ;)
Florent Viel 🦫@resmo @kelseyhightower I’m currently hosting one, so far so good, and it’s really lightweight as my CPU/RAM usage is quite low
Jake@resmo @kelseyhightower Pleroma looks interesting and lightweight, but be warned that it doesn’t support account import/export at the moment. I also read that it doesn’t support whole-server blocking.
clay@kelseyhightower 2023 is year of the mastodon ui!
Robert Cadena@kelseyhightower yup. Running my own because I want my identity tied to my domain name (and because I like to tinker). It’s a single user instance.
I’m imagining that someday I’ll be able to pay some affordable fee to have something like my own instance but that’s really just an inbox/outbox - sort of like having an email hosting provider with my own domain name.
jeffsussna@kelseyhightower the fact that you *can* run your own server is almost enough to restore one's faith in the creature that Roy Fielding loosed on the world 😃
Andrew Meredith@kelseyhightower DO I sense a "Mastodon The Hard Way" coming?
@ameredith that would be dope.
Vaidik Kapoor@kelseyhightower Definitely some UX improvement for sure
aikithoughts@kelseyhightower Makes me wonder what the Mastodon documentation is like! I need to check it out.
@kelseyhightower Nice docker image here to get you up and running quickly. https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/mastodon
Duncan Mac-Vicar P.@kelseyhightower Try github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial
Golang, pure-backend. I run it with sqlite on a micro instance.
Use pinafore (web) and Husky (android) as clients.
Everyone thinks mastodon is required.
Golang, pure-backend. I run it with sqlite on a micro instance.
Use pinafore (web) and Husky (android) as clients.
Everyone thinks mastodon is required.
Andy Watson@kelseyhightower same here. I've been tempted to start poking around and it's only been a couple days. Like I need yet another side project 😆
Word of Mouth 
@kelseyhightower
I couldn't resist the temptation. Took only a few hours yesterday to make notroot.social.
@BrideOfLinux
I couldn't resist the temptation. Took only a few hours yesterday to make notroot.social.
@BrideOfLinux
@notroot @BrideOfLinux if I understand things correctly that’s a local server admin decision right? If I run my server I set my own rules.
Christine Hall@kelseyhightower @notroot I think that's generally the case.
@kelseyhightower
Yup. I cribbed the rules from universeodon.com, but I also turned off registration. Nobody can sign up to notroot.social. But I can invite people, should I choose to.
@BrideOfLinux
Yup. I cribbed the rules from universeodon.com, but I also turned off registration. Nobody can sign up to notroot.social. But I can invite people, should I choose to.
@BrideOfLinux
Daniel Wabyick@kelseyhightower I’m wondering how content moderation will work once this thing becomes popular.
Anant Shrivastava aka anantshri@kelseyhightower in classic linux fashion you know that other GUI tool that you could have installed would have solved a bunch of your issues. and if you are so much concerned fork it and get on with it. /s
On the side note, Run a server of your own if not mastodon there are a bunch of options : https://social.anantshri.info/@anant/statuses/01GHMANK84D49ZQ5BDZT26RYAC
Post by Anant Shrivastava aka anantshri (@[email protected])
Mastodon / Fediverse was designed to be “distributed” instead of focusing on loading one specific server people should seriously start looking at running smaller servers may be one person servers for themselves. Run your own mastodon instance https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ I
Xin@kelseyhightower also tempted to run mastodon on k8s, and the cool thing is that mastodon has helm chart: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/tree/main/chart
Manpageman@kelseyhightower its just fancy email, really, so eventually everyone will tire of their own servers.
Steve Caruso@kelseyhightower It is stupidly easy if you have a spare computer. I’m talking from a Pleroma server I set up for myself and my family and it’s running off a dedicated Raspberry Pi in our bedroom. And it gives me access to everything any of the major servers can.
@Steve I'm going to have some fun this weekend trying a few of these things out.
Martin G@kelseyhightower I think that's the beauty - you could run your own server - you don't have to but you could. And that is remarkably liberating.
And I think we're going to see lots of interesting attempts at UX - some will be awful but some will be amazingly beautiful.
Levi Strope@kelseyhightower that sounds fun to me
Virtue signal 💉💉💉🇺🇸 🇺🇦@kelseyhightower Linux has far bigger UI/UX problems than fediverse. Its not a good analogy.
Jon Masters@kelseyhightower I'm running a (containerized) server on a GCP T2A #arm instance - works great!
can@kelseyhightower I can see the that certain instances becoming “cool” and sought-after. Like “OMG she is part of @xyz.com” 😆
Andrea Santaniello 🏴☠️ 
@kelseyhightower Checkout Pleroma and Misskey also.
Otto@kelseyhightower started my own server. It's been a fascinating experience. #mastodon
Marcos Lobo 💙💛@kelseyhightower accurate description, indeed. I'm also thinking to bring an old laptop and run the latest Linux Slackware distribution 🐧
&y Haskell@kelseyhightower 2022, the year of Mastod-on the desktop
Babbili👨🏻💻🪐🎶@kelseyhightower Linux is always my choice 
Aurynn Shaw@kelseyhightower No, no save yourself
@kelseyhightower idk if it's a good decision or a bad decision, but I just went straight for an own server 🙀
sluggard 
@kelseyhightower I am not tempted to run my own server, but I am tempted to poke around in the client code and see what I can add.
And then I think “oh, no, if I get into client coding for this I’ll never see my kids again”
And then I think “oh, no, if I get into client coding for this I’ll never see my kids again”
Cenobyte @kelseyhightower It’s definitely an interesting experience. I’m running a one for smol floofs 
and the odd physicist. It’s been a lot of fun, but also some definite responsibility.
If you’ve got a small community of friends/family, go for it.
and the odd physicist. It’s been a lot of fun, but also some definite responsibility.If you’ve got a small community of friends/family, go for it.