4 ms·

Two big, vanilla instances are https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social and https://mas.to https://mas.to. Unfortunately they've both been struggling to

by Joeboy 4y ago

Two big, vanilla instances are https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social and https://mas.to https://mas.to. Unfortunately they've both been struggling to keep up with demand lately. If you're paralyzed by choice, I'd say just go for one of those if / when they're accepting new users. I think Mastodon would get more signups if interested people were just pointed at like ten working, non-specialized, non-tiny instances, rather than being confronted with hundreds of weird / non-working options. I realize this feels a bit contrary to the goals of federation, but the current situation seems to be causing a lot of potential users to retreat in annoyance and confusion.

whimsicalism 4y ago
They're wasting a massive opportunity. Mastodon should have been built to scale from the start because huge viral growth is exactly how social networks like this make it big. As it stands right now, I am struggling to join because every mastodon instance I've checked is struggling with scaling.
- gbraad 4y ago
  Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without having to spend bucketloads on new servers. Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new registration/break down are at a few thousand members, maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented, but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or even Java service should be able to handle that many users on a single instance.
    - lrvick 4y ago
      Twitter makes -200m a year hosting their solution. Mastodon by contrast spreads out this load to servers paid for by users, not by ads. If you cannot join any servers, pay for a managed hosting provider to spin one up, or host yourself on a vps or a home server.
      - whimsicalism 4y ago
        That may be well and true, but seems unrelated to the point i am making, which is that I would expect a single instance to be able to handle a few thousand users.
        lrvick 4y ago
        Sure one instance could support that if you pay amazon $2k/mo for a monster instance, but most do not have that kind of money to donate. Most servers will be small, or you can host your own.
        whimsicalism 4y ago
        I think we are talking past each other.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        cactusplant7374 4y ago
        I hear you. It would be cool if someone rewrote it with a Crystal framework. Although there are limitations to this because it's faster than Ruby and similar to Ruby but not completely like Ruby. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398253
    - TJSomething 4y ago
      It's Ruby on Rails, which is the second slowest web framework I would consider reasonable for production use (after Django).
- Joeboy 4y ago
  The other opportunity "they" are missing is that normally when a new social network struggles under the weight of new users, that's good publicity. Instead of going that route, people get offered a huge list of niche or unavailable options, or told they should run their own server. And unsurprisingly a lot of people are saying, fuck that. It's frustrating to watch. I guess a lot of fediverse people don't actually want twitter normies on board though.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    The point of the fediverse was never to match the scale of Twitter on a single instance. In fact, that's something of an anti-pattern. These are the inherent trade offs of a distributed social network.
    - Joeboy 4y ago
      > The point of the fediverse was never to match the scale of Twitter on a single instance. Of course. I don't understand why you are telling me this.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Mastodon isn't a commercial entity, so what's the opportunity that's being wasted? Its entire purpose is to provide an alternative model for social media on a non-profit basis. If that doesn't scale to Twitter or Meta levels so what? That's not the goal and it's certainly far beyond what those behind it could afford. Mastodon gGmbH has just two core developers. Frankly, it's impressive that it's scaling as well as it has so far given the tiny size of the team and that all the servers are run on a volunteer basis.
OscarCunningham 4y ago
In the category of large general instances, there's also https://mstdn.social https://mstdn.social and https://mastodon.online https://mastodon.online.
- riffic 4y ago
  these large servers are being toasted right now beyond their capacity, which is giving the larger community a poor impression of this system. I'd recommend joining smaller instances or like, just running your own. WordPress with the AP plugin is a nice alternative if you just want to feed your own thoughts out into the fedi-sphere.
  - tramtrist 4y ago
    Really surprised fosstodon.org doesn't get mentioned on HN more..
LelouBil 4y ago
I want to try out Mastodont, and I also like to self host stuff. Should I self host a mastodont instance and point friends and family to it when they want to create a mastodont account ? Or would that be too much of a burden to manage ? Or maybe it would be better to register on a specialized instance to already have an interesting local feed ?

by Joeboy 4y ago

whimsicalism 4y ago

They're wasting a massive opportunity. Mastodon should have been built to scale from the start because huge viral growth is exactly how social networks like this make it big. As it stands right now, I am struggling to join because every mastodon instance I've checked is struggling with scaling.

gbraad 4y ago
Mastodon can scale, but it costs money. Most instances are hosted by people out of an interest to do good. Servers cost money... And for F/OSS project there aren't big pocket investors ... only funds, grants and hopefully donations.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Yes, when I say scalable, I mean ability to scale without having to spend bucketloads on new servers. Many of the mastodon servers I am seeing pause new registration/break down are at a few thousand members, maybe 8k max. I dont know how Mastodon is implemented, but my intuition is that a well written C++, Rust, or even Java service should be able to handle that many users on a single instance.
  - lrvick 4y ago
    Twitter makes -200m a year hosting their solution. Mastodon by contrast spreads out this load to servers paid for by users, not by ads. If you cannot join any servers, pay for a managed hosting provider to spin one up, or host yourself on a vps or a home server.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      That may be well and true, but seems unrelated to the point i am making, which is that I would expect a single instance to be able to handle a few thousand users.
      - lrvick 4y ago
        Sure one instance could support that if you pay amazon $2k/mo for a monster instance, but most do not have that kind of money to donate. Most servers will be small, or you can host your own.
        whimsicalism 4y ago
        I think we are talking past each other.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        cactusplant7374 4y ago
        I hear you. It would be cool if someone rewrote it with a Crystal framework. Although there are limitations to this because it's faster than Ruby and similar to Ruby but not completely like Ruby. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398253
  - TJSomething 4y ago
    It's Ruby on Rails, which is the second slowest web framework I would consider reasonable for production use (after Django).
Joeboy 4y ago
The other opportunity "they" are missing is that normally when a new social network struggles under the weight of new users, that's good publicity. Instead of going that route, people get offered a huge list of niche or unavailable options, or told they should run their own server. And unsurprisingly a lot of people are saying, fuck that. It's frustrating to watch. I guess a lot of fediverse people don't actually want twitter normies on board though.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  The point of the fediverse was never to match the scale of Twitter on a single instance. In fact, that's something of an anti-pattern. These are the inherent trade offs of a distributed social network.
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    > The point of the fediverse was never to match the scale of Twitter on a single instance. Of course. I don't understand why you are telling me this.
_djo_ 4y ago
Mastodon isn't a commercial entity, so what's the opportunity that's being wasted? Its entire purpose is to provide an alternative model for social media on a non-profit basis. If that doesn't scale to Twitter or Meta levels so what? That's not the goal and it's certainly far beyond what those behind it could afford. Mastodon gGmbH has just two core developers. Frankly, it's impressive that it's scaling as well as it has so far given the tiny size of the team and that all the servers are run on a volunteer basis.

OscarCunningham 4y ago

In the category of large general instances, there's also https://mstdn.social https://mstdn.social and https://mastodon.online https://mastodon.online.

riffic 4y ago
these large servers are being toasted right now beyond their capacity, which is giving the larger community a poor impression of this system. I'd recommend joining smaller instances or like, just running your own. WordPress with the AP plugin is a nice alternative if you just want to feed your own thoughts out into the fedi-sphere.
- tramtrist 4y ago
  Really surprised fosstodon.org doesn't get mentioned on HN more..

LelouBil 4y ago

I want to try out Mastodont, and I also like to self host stuff. Should I self host a mastodont instance and point friends and family to it when they want to create a mastodont account ? Or would that be too much of a burden to manage ? Or maybe it would be better to register on a specialized instance to already have an interesting local feed ?