Mastodawn

Ikhwan Nazri Jul 2, 2023

Grow Your Own Services 🌱

#Twitter has completely cut off public access to posts. Twitter accounts are now unable to share anything with non-Twitter people. Direct links no longer work, which is a disaster for accounts distributing public information.

This is a textbook example of why you should have your own server as part of a federated social network. Ownership means your public links will never break, federation means you can reach a mass audience.

It's VERY easy to set up your own server: https://growyourown.services/grow-your-own-social-network

Grow your own social network – Grow Your Own Services

Jesse Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown Don't forget the tracking potential of that.

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 1, 2023

Oh yeah, definitely! There are many different reasons why it's a good idea to have your own server:

https://growyourown.services/why-growing-your-own-services-is-a-good-idea/

Why growing your own services is a good idea! – Grow Your Own Services

nadin brzezinski Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown @feditips still considering it

ZiaMadrina Jul 1, 2023

Joe Cotellese Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown I’m still able to access it. I wonder if it’s a regional thing or just a bug?

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 1, 2023

Remnants of some kind of local caching system maybe?

Where I live, everything on Twitter now leads to a login screen.

Grayson Page Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown @JoeCotellese as I understand it, it depends on if you are logged in and have a session/cookie active. No active session, no content.

Joe Cotellese Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown just confirmed that I cannot see Twitter if I try to browse an account from Safari privacy mode.

annie gray Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown
Fine by me. Nothing is taking me back to that horrorshow.

forrest Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown twitter is now as annoying to browse as pinterest and i'm loving it

Lyle, a walking haunted house Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown I think you're way overselling "very easy" here.

For us long in the beard, old time admins, sure. But for jo-user, it's still way out of reach.

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 1, 2023

I don't think it is difficult any more, thanks to managed hosting companies. You don't need tech skills, a managed hosting company does all the installation, maintenance and upgrades.

That's why I set up this website, to let people know. An instance owner doesn't need to do techy stuff any more.

Instance settings are entirely through the same graphical web interface that they would use for their normal account settings.

Lyle, a walking haunted house Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown I think we're using different metrics for "easy".

Until it's "signing up for an email account" easy, it's still going to be beyond the skill level of a lot of people.

I'm not disagreeing about it having gotten loads better. I remember the nightmare that was running an identi.ca server. But "miles better" isn't "so easy anyone can do it"

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 1, 2023

The signup process for services like https://masto.host etc is about similar complexity to signing up with an email provider or registering for an account on an online shop. It pretty much is an online shop really, you just pick which plan you want and fill in your payment details.

The one possibly tricky bit is pointing the domain name to the host, because it may involve two different providers. But that is a one-off thing that the domain company can possibly deal with for a fee.

Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

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

Masto.host

William B Peckham Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown @x1101 But... But... But I LOVE the techy stuff!!!

Lyle, a walking haunted house Jul 1, 2023

@wbpeckham @homegrown oh, no doubt. I do too.

I'm just trying to call attention to a trap I fell in for a long time. "Easy for me" isn't "easy for everyone" or even "easy for the target audience"

DOMINIC Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown Elon Musk is not thinking.gosh

David W. Jones Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown Setting up might be easy. But the devil is in the maintenance...

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 2, 2023

@dancingtreefrog

The technical maintenance is handled by the managed hosting service. They do all upgrades, bug fixes, installations etc behind the scenes, you don't have to think about it at all.

The only burden on the owner is if they decide to run a public instance that's open to public sign-ups. In that case, the moderation burden does become very significant.

David W. Jones Jul 3, 2023

@homegrown Thanks, I figured moderation would be significant. I used to teach a web development course aimed at businesses setting out to get their first website up. One phase of the class was planning the site. And that phase included planning for content maintenance, updates and moderation. Kind of a lesson for managers that figured they could just dump that task on a secretary...
Costs of such a managed hosting service?

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 3, 2023

@dancingtreefrog

Managed hosting costs are surprisingly low, starts from about $10 a month including tax for five active users. The hosting cost per user drops massively as the number of users goes up, it's about $100 a month including tax for 2000 active users.

However, as the number of users goes up, the labour cost of moderation rises significantly, so this balances out the savings on hosting costs. It would be good to encourage smaller servers where human moderation is more feasible.

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 3, 2023

@dancingtreefrog

And yeah, setting up an online social network is definitely a long term commitment! It can't be seen as a "create and forget" thing.

David W. Jones Jul 4, 2023

@homegrown
So I shall just be a user, not an admin. 😃

Alix Jul 1, 2023

@homegrown links are broken?! How on earth are they going to make money out of twitter if tracking no longer works? This is a disaster I've worked in online Ad industry and every second I'm just more shocked. They should be losing money like every 10^-10000 second

Grow Your Own Services 🌱Jul 2, 2023

It's almost as if Musk has no idea what he is doing.