John GruberJan 31, 2023

I like the fact that mastodon.social is the biggest instance, but I would leave for an instance that is paid only, say $10/month, has a cool domain name, and thus can afford to raise the rate limits.

Mastodon.social feels like early Twitter both culturally (good), and fail-whale-wise (not good).

Show threadTim BrayJan 31, 2023

@gruber

I'm working with some people who trying to set up an instance which is a member-owned co-op. A bit of spreadsheeting suggests that for a large-ish instance you could run just fine on $5/month.

Show threadJohn GruberFeb 1, 2023
@timbray I think I'd prefer a straight-up for-profit paid service, but a co-op model is tempting too. But either way, something that is clearly and obviously sustainable simply through paying users. That's the key.
Show threadRui Carmo

@gruber @timbray a small community Mastodon server, where patrons get a special tick mark next to their usernames? 😬

Seriously now, I am very wary of smaller instances due to opinionated admins. And I’ve been running a test instance for a month now, but hesitant to self-host or run a community one because I don’t want the admin overhead (or the legal hassles in case something goes south).

Feb 1, 2023 at 7:43amIvory for iOS