Big rumblings in the expansion of the #Fediverse have been happening recently.

#Tumblr has already promised to implement #ActivityPub (the protocol Mastodon uses), which will mean you can follow Tumblr accounts from here and vice versa. And today we a learning that #Flickr is also considering it!

This will be a massive expansion, which obviously carries some uncertainties, but I, for one, welcome our new federation partners.

This is the way the internet is supposed to work.

@john Will Mastadon's servers have the capacity to cope with all this new activity? They must have zillions arriving from Twitter too?
@katedegerdon @john I assume more activity means more instances. It seems every busy celebrity needs their own, for instance. Businesses will pop up that specialize in running your Mastodon servers, etc.

@pammystarr @katedegerdon @john
That already exists: https://masto.host offers managed Mastodon hosting ($40/mo for ~500 users, seems a bit high but not unreasonable to me), but right now they are so swamped they're not taking new subscriptions. Heck of a problem to have as a business.

I do have some questions about how well Mastodon (the mainline server) scales, and if there are opportunities for optimization that could make managed hosting cheaper per user.

Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

Masto.host was built from the ground up to make running a Mastodon instance easy.

Masto.host

@kadin @pammystarr @katedegerdon Other implementations of ActivityPub are more efficient, so I understand. Pleroma for one.

Still, I think masto.host offers a good deal, and their support is top-notch.

Toot.io also offers managed hosting, but it's starts pretty high: https://toot.io/mastodon_hosting.html

toot.io - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

Fully managed, dedicated Mastodon hosting by toot.io—transparent pricing, reliable operations, and expert support.

toot.io - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

@john @kadin @pammystarr @katedegerdon

I think Pleroma is the way to go. Its Elixir-based scalable architecture, design and compatibility surpasses Mastodon, but it does need more love on the web UI side of things.

The Metatext app connects seamlessly to it as well as Mastodon.

@rsalas @kadin @pammystarr @katedegerdon

Pleroma's web-facing aspect could do with some work, yes. But also, is there a reason Pleroma instances seem to be run by mostly trollish dickheads?

@john LOL