Nikita Borisov
Thinking of moving Mastodon servers. Where should I go? Or does it matter?
infosec.exchange
50%
discuss.systems
20%
self-hosted instance
0%
don't bother
30%
Poll ended at .
Nov 9, 2024 at 1:17pmWeb
Show threadTroed SångbergNov 9, 2024

@nikita May I ask why? If there's something you feel is not working correctly here at IOCX we'd love to know what :)

/IOCX moderator

Show threadNikita BorisovNov 9, 2024
@troed most of my follows are elsewhere, but IDK if that's a reason to move
Show threadTroed SångbergNov 10, 2024

@nikita Being able to move is one of the great things about Mastodon, I don't think anyone really needs any reason to do so :)

In general which instance you use is "not important" - with caveats. If it's a very small instance, you might not see as much content (replies etc) on posts from those that you follow. Otherwise it comes down to two things: Whether the local timeline on the instance is something you're interested in, and whether the moderation standards are something you agree with.

Show threadNikita BorisovNov 10, 2024
@troed thanks, I'll consider this!
Show threadSean PeisertNov 13, 2024
@troed Hi - why would one see less content like replies on posts from people you follow on small instances? Is that because of variations in filtering rules?
Show threadTroed SångbergNov 15, 2024

@peisert Sorry for the late reply. It's because of how federation works. An instance only know of posts that someone on that instance is subscribing to. Let's say I, on my personal instance, subscribe to the hashtag Politics (avoiding the hash so as to not tag in this post). Only posts from accounts I subscribe to will ever reach my instance, so that hashtag will only ever show those posts. Not any other post from the Fediverse with that tag.

The same is true for replies (!). I won't get replies to posts unless someone on my server is subscribed to the accounts making those replies.

Some of the solutions that exist for this the FediFetcher, that goes through follows/followers/replies etc and fetches any posts that belong to those directly from the origin servers, or relays that feed everything one instance sees onto other instances that subscribe to the relay.

This is why Bluesky has a single firehose containing all posts (and why it isn't federated) and is a very hard problem to "solve". Not all small instances want to receive all posts in the whole fediverse either ;)