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Yes. But even more important is software like Mastodon needs to get easier for people to selfhost, by about an order of magnitude. It shouldn't be any more diff

Yes. But even more important is software like Mastodon needs to get easier for people to selfhost, by about an order of magnitude. It shouldn't be any more difficult or less secure to run your own Mastodon instance than it is to run an app on your phone. In my vision of the future internet, when you upgrade your phone, your old phone gets plugged into a power socket and USB drive in the corner and becomes your new selfhosting server. You have apps for Mastodon, Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Plex, calendars, whatever. The key pieces missing are simple tunneling services (think ngrok with a GUI designed for selfhosters), easier domain name management, and porting apps to run on phones. The most difficult is the last one but I'm hopeful that virtualization will take care of that in the near future[0], and maybe things like Wasm in the long run. EDIT: PS - If you're interested in making this world a reality, join us over at https://forum.indiebits.io/ https://forum.indiebits.io/ [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ybq4ih/pixel_7_has_kvm_on_by_default_and_i_finally_got_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ybq4ih/pixel_7_has...

dmonitor 4y ago
Is Tailscale not good enough for a simple tunneling service?
- anderspitman 4y ago
  Tailscale is awesome. One of my two favorite companies alongside fly.io. But these are tools built for sysadmins and developers. Selfhosting needs tools built for the masses.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  What's a tunneling service? Do I need to use that before I can make a Mastodon account? What app is that on - wait, there are "instances", what the hell is that? Screw it, this is too complicated - I'm going back to twitter.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    I completely agree. Which is why tunneling should be built-in to having a domain name. It should be easier than a phone number. You buy a domain from a domain seller and pay them $5/mo to provide tunneling. All the user needs to understand is: * I install the app * App requests access to your domain so it can set up appname.yourdomain.com * I grant permission and we're live.
seydor 4y ago
should be wordpress-level easy at least. But last i checked it wasnt easy. Otherwise , mastodon hosters will become sneaky corporate spies, ad injectors and data resellers
- xtracto 4y ago
  Just today I paid for a domain name in name.com. As part of the package, they sold me a hosted & managed WordPress installation for $60 USD a year. I was positively impressed (last time I setup a WP server I paid $5 a month for DigitalOcean, which makes it $60 for something I have to manage). Companies like name.com, godaddy and whatnot should offer that kind of option. Or even AWS should have a "managed mastodon" server maybe. At the end of the day, most companies nowadays have their infrastructure in one of the 4-6 main cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCS, Oracle, ...).
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    Now if only there was a popular registrar with a streamlined interface that wasn't constantly trying to up sell you. Personally I would prefer to see registrars limit themselves to providing domain names. But for that to work seamlessly they all need to support an open DNS protocol that makes it easy for users to delegate subdomains to 3rd-party apps and services. Something like DomainConnect[0] but with better support for selfhosting[1]. [0]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/ [1]: https://github.com/Domain-Connect/spec/issues/64 https://github.com/Domain-Connect/spec/issues/64
- rakoo 4y ago
  Install yunohost. Clicks in a UI. Install pleroma. Or mastodon. Or pixelfed (for images). Or peertube (for videos). Or plume (for blogging). Clicks in a UI.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    But what about step 0: have a working Linux installation with root privileges, and understand all the security implications of operating said installation.
alexb_ 4y ago
My hardline 1TB per month up/down data cap says no to that entire idea. Can't selfhost when 1 person requesting a lot means you are out hundreds of dollars. But I do wish selfhosting was just easy. It shouldn't be this hard.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  If a federated protocol causes the average user to use more than 1TB of traffic in a month, then it's a bad protocol. There very well may be exceptional cases (famous people regularly going viral), but they wouldn't want to be hosting from a home location anyway.
  - alexb_ 4y ago
    Virality is a big part of social media. The fact that a lot of people wanting to see something I made punishes me with hundreds of dollars worth of overage fees means that it's just bad to use it. You are punished for "succeeding". It's not about the average user, but when said average user gets their 15 minutes.
    - anderspitman 4y ago
      As I said, if the protocol itself can't handle this scenario, it's doomed to have low adoption. Unless of course ISPs get pressured into lifting datacaps. Maybe a "viral" clause for exactly these sorts of situations? I think there are multiple potential solutions.
  - snapetom 4y ago
    Yes, I'm sure someone like Selena Gomez is going to get her team to self hosting from her EC2 instance /s The "famous people" care about getting their posts to fans. If you're able to convince and migrate hundreds of millions of teenagers to this self-hosted dream, sure. However, that's just not going to happen.
    - anderspitman 4y ago
snapetom 4y ago
The self-hosting argument shows how out of touch fediverse developers are. Try explaining to the influencer celeb why they should self-host. In fact, just try explaining to them they need to pick a mastodon instance, any instance. "it's so easy." No it's not.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  It's actually infuriating to read. If it's harder than "App downloaded, account made" then you've already lost. Anything more complex than that is a complete non-starter.
  - rakoo 4y ago
    Lost what, exactly ? Contrary to the capitalistic world of Twitter, where bigger faster is always better, the fediverse is not about that. If you don't want to adapt and are just trying to recreate Twitter, it's a complete non-starter.
    - alexb_ 4y ago
      Lost the ability to actually reach people. Lost the ability to actually talk with people in your communities. Lost the ability for fucking anybody who isn't a wizard to know how to even read something. I mean Jesus, bulletin boards are easier than this.
      - rakoo 4y ago
        How did you lose anything ? The fediverse is one way to communicate. IRC, email, BBS, gopher are all ways plebiscited by fediverse enthusiasts to also communicate because there is no one tool that can do everything. If mastodon is not for you, use something else; no one blames you
        alexb_ 4y ago
        >IRC, email, BBS, gopher You need to take a step back, and look at what the average Joe is actually using. Don't assume that because your programmer friends use these obscure protocols for everyday communication that everyone is.
funshed 4y ago
I tried for a few hours to get it running on Portainer and gave up.

dmonitor 4y ago

Is Tailscale not good enough for a simple tunneling service?

anderspitman 4y ago
Tailscale is awesome. One of my two favorite companies alongside fly.io. But these are tools built for sysadmins and developers. Selfhosting needs tools built for the masses.
alexb_ 4y ago
What's a tunneling service? Do I need to use that before I can make a Mastodon account? What app is that on - wait, there are "instances", what the hell is that? Screw it, this is too complicated - I'm going back to twitter.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  I completely agree. Which is why tunneling should be built-in to having a domain name. It should be easier than a phone number. You buy a domain from a domain seller and pay them $5/mo to provide tunneling. All the user needs to understand is: * I install the app * App requests access to your domain so it can set up appname.yourdomain.com * I grant permission and we're live.

seydor 4y ago

should be wordpress-level easy at least. But last i checked it wasnt easy. Otherwise , mastodon hosters will become sneaky corporate spies, ad injectors and data resellers

xtracto 4y ago
Just today I paid for a domain name in name.com. As part of the package, they sold me a hosted & managed WordPress installation for $60 USD a year. I was positively impressed (last time I setup a WP server I paid $5 a month for DigitalOcean, which makes it $60 for something I have to manage). Companies like name.com, godaddy and whatnot should offer that kind of option. Or even AWS should have a "managed mastodon" server maybe. At the end of the day, most companies nowadays have their infrastructure in one of the 4-6 main cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCS, Oracle, ...).
- anderspitman 4y ago
  Now if only there was a popular registrar with a streamlined interface that wasn't constantly trying to up sell you. Personally I would prefer to see registrars limit themselves to providing domain names. But for that to work seamlessly they all need to support an open DNS protocol that makes it easy for users to delegate subdomains to 3rd-party apps and services. Something like DomainConnect[0] but with better support for selfhosting[1]. [0]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/ [1]: https://github.com/Domain-Connect/spec/issues/64 https://github.com/Domain-Connect/spec/issues/64
rakoo 4y ago
Install yunohost. Clicks in a UI. Install pleroma. Or mastodon. Or pixelfed (for images). Or peertube (for videos). Or plume (for blogging). Clicks in a UI.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  But what about step 0: have a working Linux installation with root privileges, and understand all the security implications of operating said installation.

alexb_ 4y ago

My hardline 1TB per month up/down data cap says no to that entire idea. Can't selfhost when 1 person requesting a lot means you are out hundreds of dollars. But I do wish selfhosting was just easy. It shouldn't be this hard.

anderspitman 4y ago
If a federated protocol causes the average user to use more than 1TB of traffic in a month, then it's a bad protocol. There very well may be exceptional cases (famous people regularly going viral), but they wouldn't want to be hosting from a home location anyway.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  Virality is a big part of social media. The fact that a lot of people wanting to see something I made punishes me with hundreds of dollars worth of overage fees means that it's just bad to use it. You are punished for "succeeding". It's not about the average user, but when said average user gets their 15 minutes.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    As I said, if the protocol itself can't handle this scenario, it's doomed to have low adoption. Unless of course ISPs get pressured into lifting datacaps. Maybe a "viral" clause for exactly these sorts of situations? I think there are multiple potential solutions.
- snapetom 4y ago
  Yes, I'm sure someone like Selena Gomez is going to get her team to self hosting from her EC2 instance /s The "famous people" care about getting their posts to fans. If you're able to convince and migrate hundreds of millions of teenagers to this self-hosted dream, sure. However, that's just not going to happen.
  - anderspitman 4y ago

snapetom 4y ago

The self-hosting argument shows how out of touch fediverse developers are. Try explaining to the influencer celeb why they should self-host. In fact, just try explaining to them they need to pick a mastodon instance, any instance. "it's so easy." No it's not.

alexb_ 4y ago
It's actually infuriating to read. If it's harder than "App downloaded, account made" then you've already lost. Anything more complex than that is a complete non-starter.
- rakoo 4y ago
  Lost what, exactly ? Contrary to the capitalistic world of Twitter, where bigger faster is always better, the fediverse is not about that. If you don't want to adapt and are just trying to recreate Twitter, it's a complete non-starter.
  - alexb_ 4y ago
    Lost the ability to actually reach people. Lost the ability to actually talk with people in your communities. Lost the ability for fucking anybody who isn't a wizard to know how to even read something. I mean Jesus, bulletin boards are easier than this.
    - rakoo 4y ago
      How did you lose anything ? The fediverse is one way to communicate. IRC, email, BBS, gopher are all ways plebiscited by fediverse enthusiasts to also communicate because there is no one tool that can do everything. If mastodon is not for you, use something else; no one blames you
      - alexb_ 4y ago
        >IRC, email, BBS, gopher You need to take a step back, and look at what the average Joe is actually using. Don't assume that because your programmer friends use these obscure protocols for everyday communication that everyone is.

funshed 4y ago

I tried for a few hours to get it running on Portainer and gave up.