3 ms·

Since it's supposedly 'decentralized', and this is HN, what are the downsides to just hosting a private ActivityPub instance and following people from there? Pl

• Macha 4y ago
  Yes (apart from the instances which operate on a whitelist basis for federation)
• jrnichols 4y ago
  yes, you can most certainly do that.
• blep_ 4y ago
  I do this, and more people should. People on huge multi-user instances are completely missing the point of federation. The downsides are the usual sysadmin stuff that comes with running servers for anything. People also get excited about the instance-local timelines on multi-user instances, but again, that's completely missing the point.
• M2Ys4U 4y ago
  I've run my own single-user instance since 2018 - the biggest downside is discoverability and community. Discoverability: With other users on the instance the federated timeline is populated by posts from users that others on your instance follow, so you have to follow people a bit more liberally to discover other posts. Community: Instances also have a local timeline, which shows posts from others on the instance and this gives each one a slightly different vibe. With a single-user instance it's just your posts! But either way, you can still interact with pretty much anybody else in the Fediverse, and once you're followed by a couple of people your posts will go out to the federated timelines of other instances and you'll get interactions via that.
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  You can and should do this, if you have the time and energy to do so.