13 ms·

Togethr: Own Mastodon-compatible decentralized social network instance

112 points by MattJ100 4y ago

packetlost 4y ago
Why would I want this over something like mastodon.social or SDF's Mastodon? $7/month seems very steep for what amounts to the ability to have a custom domain and admin responsibility.
- ultimape 4y ago
  This appears to be a managed hosting provider offering access to a pleroma instance underneath, not a software package.
  - packetlost 4y ago
    That's sort of my point. Managed hosting is exactly what I get for free from SDF (or mastodon.social), so what's the benefit?
    - jgfrgcss 4y ago
      A clear business model and alignment of interests, as a customer. Also no lock in since the customer owns their domain. How is SDF funded? How can anyone be certain it will continue to be funded, if it offers a service gratis that costs the provider money to operate? Is that funding source aligned with my beliefs and interests? These are questions you don't have when you just pay for things. Another example: I use FastMail with a custom domain. Yes, I could just use Gmail, but I don't, for the reasons listed above.
      - the_common_man 4y ago
        But you can't use Gmail with a custom domain for free. I bet that's a decision point
        TurkTurkleton 4y ago
        You can't use Fastmail for free at all, custom domain or no.
        the_common_man 4y ago
        Yes. But what I am saying is since gmail becomes paid for custom domains, you _then_ decide, you might as well pay someone else.
      - entropicdrifter 4y ago
        SDF has been a self-sustaining non-profit since the 80's. I'm much more skeptical of a newcomer than of them, personally
    - qznc 4y ago
      Your own domain?
    - ruined 4y ago
      you get to set your own federation rules, and perform your own moderation.
      - singpolyma3 4y ago
        And switch to self-hosting or another hosting company whenever you want, never need to change your address because you own the domain. Control and freedom. Also support from humans who are paid to support you.
    - masukomi 4y ago
      _you_ don't get managed hosting from mastodon.social the site owner does (if they used a service like this). You just get an account that someone else manages the infrastructure beneath. This gives you your own instance, which in addition to using your own domain, means you can can set the rules of the server (what kind of speech is and isn't allowed), you can boot people you don't want. You can control who gets in. you can control what other servers are blocked (i assume that is an option in pleroma too).
      - remram 4y ago
        Do you really get to set all the rules? This lists no terms of service at this point, but is there any reason to assume that the rules will be significantly more lax than e.g. twitter.com? As a person who've had their VPS disconnected by OVH over a malicious link posted by a third-party on my service, I am very skeptical. Additionally other instances could very well block all Togethr instances if they see abuse from customers, the same way they can block an instance if they see abuse from their members.
        singpolyma3 4y ago
        Every Togethr instrnce has a separate domain name and IP address, so blocking them all for no reason isn't really possible. Blocking any given one is of course.
        remram 4y ago
        By "not possible" you mean that it's not a feature that exists in Mastodon today. In that sense you are right.
        singpolyma3 4y ago
        I mean there is no way to tell if an instance is hosted by Togethr or not.
        4y ago
    - mark_l_watson 4y ago
      I agree, but I was concerned if mastodon.social was sufficiently funded so I started giving them a tiny amount of money every month. I suppose it would be good to have Mastodon on my own domain, but I really don't care that much (I have had my website on my own domain for 30+ years).
    - wink 4y ago
      In one of the former fediverse hype cycles (either 2020 or 2018...) I made an account on an instance that was not one of the main 5 ones and followed a bunch of people. Some weeks ago I looked at that account and literally 90% of the accounts I had followed had vanished because the instances _they_ were on went offline in the meantime. Honestly a little surprised the one I chose was still offline, as it's also just a random small one. Yes, this is probably not so likely for mastodon.social or SDF, but still. It's just like getting a free email account at some random place, it could be gone every day.
- riffic 4y ago
  obviously it't not for you. perhaps there is another end user in mind (like groups/organizations)
yupyup54133 4y ago
Cool but I'd much rather see someone sell a little server box where all I would need to do is plug it into my router and open up a port. IE: If we are going to decentralize with Mastodon-style software lets actually decentralize the hardware used to host the system.
- singpolyma3 4y ago
  I would love to do this, but it's a lot more work to maintain that kind of thing for most users. At least with Togethr we let you choose from many different data centres so the instances won't all be in the same place.
- wmf 4y ago
  Helm looks pretty cool although it's expensive and they only have two apps (email and OwnCloud): https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2 https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2
- ay 4y ago
  You would still need the domain setup, etc… or would you be happy to use your hardware and some free subdomain from elsewhere ?
  - 0x0000000 4y ago
    I think it's something that a vanity subdomain would be fine for the base case, with an optional upsell for a custom domain. The self-hosted box would need to have some way to dynamically update DNS, as the average consumer doesn't have a static IP.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  You're not wrong. But, i feel that this type of (paid) offering is the next best thing. What we need is many, many more paid providers, which helps decentralize things a little at least (and of course helps those less techie than some)...until your proposed solution is more easily implementable by a greater swath of the interested population.
colpabar 4y ago
Off topic, but the whole "let's just remove the 'e' from a word that ends in 'er'" naming trend needs to die.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- remram 4y ago
  It does look pretty lame, but at least it is web-searchable. Using an actual common English name unmodified is worse in that regard.
_hzw 4y ago
I would rather run a Bookwyrm [0] instance. [0]: https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm
- rrix2 4y ago
  looks cool, but that's a totally different sort of user experience that happens to use the same ActivityPub layer, no?
- singpolyma3 4y ago
  If there is interest in other formats and people are willing to pay on our model for them we can likely add instance types for things like this.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
Cool, I like seeing more commercial vendors supporting Mastodon. I support mastodon.social and use them [1]. I support Elon Musk buying Twitter and charging $2/month for a verified account, etc., but I also love seeing a major uptake on Mastodon-based decentralized services. [1] https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson
throwaway15908 4y ago
Wouldn't it be feasible to replace this "get your own domain" part just by letting tor doing the lookup for some introduced .onion site. My reasoning is, that this could get much faster adoption rates and/but is also self hosted on a single client device.
- singpolyma3 4y ago
  The benefit of giving people free domains is they work already with the fediverse we have and make more sense to regular folk than onion names.
est 4y ago
Is it possible to host ActivityPub protocol on a static site? I searched some comments saying one-direction publishing is possible, but federation with comments is surely impossible.
- singpolyma3 4y ago
  Fully static no, though with a receiver somewhere that you inline the comments using JavaScript or something I guess you could. You may want to check out epicyon or honk.
- grishka 4y ago
  Short answer: no. Longer answer: you need a server application of some sort in order to process the activities you receive in the inbox and send your activities out to your followers, and a database of some sort to store the follow relationships. One-direction federation is also not very feasible with static files because the follow flow involves sending activities in both directions. You receive a Follow activity in your inbox, which you must wrap into an Accept activity and send that back to the inbox of that follower as an acknowledgement.

112 points by MattJ100 4y ago

Why would I want this over something like mastodon.social or SDF's Mastodon? $7/month seems very steep for what amounts to the ability to have a custom domain and admin responsibility.

ultimape 4y ago
This appears to be a managed hosting provider offering access to a pleroma instance underneath, not a software package.
- packetlost 4y ago
  That's sort of my point. Managed hosting is exactly what I get for free from SDF (or mastodon.social), so what's the benefit?
  - jgfrgcss 4y ago
    A clear business model and alignment of interests, as a customer. Also no lock in since the customer owns their domain. How is SDF funded? How can anyone be certain it will continue to be funded, if it offers a service gratis that costs the provider money to operate? Is that funding source aligned with my beliefs and interests? These are questions you don't have when you just pay for things. Another example: I use FastMail with a custom domain. Yes, I could just use Gmail, but I don't, for the reasons listed above.
    - the_common_man 4y ago
      But you can't use Gmail with a custom domain for free. I bet that's a decision point
      - TurkTurkleton 4y ago
        You can't use Fastmail for free at all, custom domain or no.
        the_common_man 4y ago
        Yes. But what I am saying is since gmail becomes paid for custom domains, you _then_ decide, you might as well pay someone else.
    - entropicdrifter 4y ago
      SDF has been a self-sustaining non-profit since the 80's. I'm much more skeptical of a newcomer than of them, personally
  - qznc 4y ago
    Your own domain?
  - ruined 4y ago
    you get to set your own federation rules, and perform your own moderation.
    - singpolyma3 4y ago
      And switch to self-hosting or another hosting company whenever you want, never need to change your address because you own the domain. Control and freedom. Also support from humans who are paid to support you.
  - masukomi 4y ago
    _you_ don't get managed hosting from mastodon.social the site owner does (if they used a service like this). You just get an account that someone else manages the infrastructure beneath. This gives you your own instance, which in addition to using your own domain, means you can can set the rules of the server (what kind of speech is and isn't allowed), you can boot people you don't want. You can control who gets in. you can control what other servers are blocked (i assume that is an option in pleroma too).
    - remram 4y ago
      Do you really get to set all the rules? This lists no terms of service at this point, but is there any reason to assume that the rules will be significantly more lax than e.g. twitter.com? As a person who've had their VPS disconnected by OVH over a malicious link posted by a third-party on my service, I am very skeptical. Additionally other instances could very well block all Togethr instances if they see abuse from customers, the same way they can block an instance if they see abuse from their members.
      - singpolyma3 4y ago
        Every Togethr instrnce has a separate domain name and IP address, so blocking them all for no reason isn't really possible. Blocking any given one is of course.
        remram 4y ago
        By "not possible" you mean that it's not a feature that exists in Mastodon today. In that sense you are right.
        singpolyma3 4y ago
        I mean there is no way to tell if an instance is hosted by Togethr or not.
        4y ago
  - mark_l_watson 4y ago
    I agree, but I was concerned if mastodon.social was sufficiently funded so I started giving them a tiny amount of money every month. I suppose it would be good to have Mastodon on my own domain, but I really don't care that much (I have had my website on my own domain for 30+ years).
  - wink 4y ago
    In one of the former fediverse hype cycles (either 2020 or 2018...) I made an account on an instance that was not one of the main 5 ones and followed a bunch of people. Some weeks ago I looked at that account and literally 90% of the accounts I had followed had vanished because the instances _they_ were on went offline in the meantime. Honestly a little surprised the one I chose was still offline, as it's also just a random small one. Yes, this is probably not so likely for mastodon.social or SDF, but still. It's just like getting a free email account at some random place, it could be gone every day.
riffic 4y ago
obviously it't not for you. perhaps there is another end user in mind (like groups/organizations)

yupyup54133 4y ago

Cool but I'd much rather see someone sell a little server box where all I would need to do is plug it into my router and open up a port. IE: If we are going to decentralize with Mastodon-style software lets actually decentralize the hardware used to host the system.

singpolyma3 4y ago
I would love to do this, but it's a lot more work to maintain that kind of thing for most users. At least with Togethr we let you choose from many different data centres so the instances won't all be in the same place.
wmf 4y ago
Helm looks pretty cool although it's expensive and they only have two apps (email and OwnCloud): https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2 https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2
ay 4y ago
You would still need the domain setup, etc… or would you be happy to use your hardware and some free subdomain from elsewhere ?
- 0x0000000 4y ago
  I think it's something that a vanity subdomain would be fine for the base case, with an optional upsell for a custom domain. The self-hosted box would need to have some way to dynamically update DNS, as the average consumer doesn't have a static IP.
mxuribe 4y ago
You're not wrong. But, i feel that this type of (paid) offering is the next best thing. What we need is many, many more paid providers, which helps decentralize things a little at least (and of course helps those less techie than some)...until your proposed solution is more easily implementable by a greater swath of the interested population.

colpabar 4y ago

Off topic, but the whole "let's just remove the 'e' from a word that ends in 'er'" naming trend needs to die.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
remram 4y ago
It does look pretty lame, but at least it is web-searchable. Using an actual common English name unmodified is worse in that regard.

_hzw 4y ago

I would rather run a Bookwyrm [0] instance. [0]: https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm

rrix2 4y ago
looks cool, but that's a totally different sort of user experience that happens to use the same ActivityPub layer, no?
singpolyma3 4y ago
If there is interest in other formats and people are willing to pay on our model for them we can likely add instance types for things like this.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

Cool, I like seeing more commercial vendors supporting Mastodon. I support mastodon.social and use them [1]. I support Elon Musk buying Twitter and charging $2/month for a verified account, etc., but I also love seeing a major uptake on Mastodon-based decentralized services. [1] https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson

throwaway15908 4y ago

Wouldn't it be feasible to replace this "get your own domain" part just by letting tor doing the lookup for some introduced .onion site. My reasoning is, that this could get much faster adoption rates and/but is also self hosted on a single client device.

singpolyma3 4y ago
The benefit of giving people free domains is they work already with the fediverse we have and make more sense to regular folk than onion names.

est 4y ago

Is it possible to host ActivityPub protocol on a static site? I searched some comments saying one-direction publishing is possible, but federation with comments is surely impossible.

singpolyma3 4y ago
Fully static no, though with a receiver somewhere that you inline the comments using JavaScript or something I guess you could. You may want to check out epicyon or honk.
grishka 4y ago
Short answer: no. Longer answer: you need a server application of some sort in order to process the activities you receive in the inbox and send your activities out to your followers, and a database of some sort to store the follow relationships. One-direction federation is also not very feasible with static files because the follow flow involves sending activities in both directions. You receive a Follow activity in your inbox, which you must wrap into an Accept activity and send that back to the inbox of that follower as an acknowledgement.