5 ms·

Having a specilized hosting company means that self-hosting Mastodon is challenging! So, it's MastoDon't, basically!

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I mean, yes self hosting a Linux computer in the cloud requires certain skills and time. This is the basis of the business model for the biggest companies on the internet - we will run a service for you so you don’t have to run your own server. This is true even for hosting a basic HTML web page - a whole lot of people do not want to operate their own server, and this in no way means the service is bad.
- nikolay 4y ago
  Wrong! Hosting Mastodon is a different type of challenge, not to mention how much wasteful it is due to the poor choice of Ruby! Yes, Oracle Labs are trying Truffle, but it's not officially supported yet.
  - derefr 4y ago
    What does the choice of programming language for a reference implementation have to do with the cost/benefit analysis of the protocol it implements?
    - nikolay 4y ago
      Oh, it's now a reference implementation... since when?! Do those people who climb on the Mastodon bandwagon know this is just a POC turned into a Product, which now competes with Twitter?! The language makes a huge difference as you need to deploy the whole Ruby toolchain, and front it with all the hard choices Rubyists had to deal with for ages to make it kinda work! You don't make a distributed competitor of Twitter following its own wrong design chocies! Mastodon is old, and it's a shaky foundation, and it should be rebuilt from scratch instead of disappointing the millions of people who suddenly like Dorsey more than Musk... although Dorsey is working on Bluesky, not Mastodon, or ActivityPub!
      - jsjohnst 4y ago
        > Oh, it's now a reference implementation... since when?! Do those people who climb on the Mastodon bandwagon know this is just a POC turned into a Product, which now competes with Twitter?! Might I suggest you take a deep breath and tell yourself ‘it’s ok, I don’t need to pick fights with random people over trivial things’? > The language makes a huge difference If a decentralized social network is a good thing (jury is out imho), guess it’s a good thing that there’s ActivityPub implementations in multiple wildly different languages then?
      - libraryatnight 4y ago
        What's your beef? Seriously.
        nikolay 4y ago
        Seriously? We used to have comptuters with just 48KB RAM and created great software for it. Now, we have mobile apps like Facebook, which is over 2GB in size, and they are just a gigafat client of a server app!!! Mastodon is just like that - slow, wasteful, not scalable! And what's the worst is that people are getting hopeful about it not remembering how Ruby tanked Twitter back then! Doesn't anyone remember the Fail Whale?!
        libraryatnight 4y ago
        You need to calm down
        TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        For real.
        nikolay 4y ago
        Actually, I'm pretty calm - I can't say the same about the super excited users of Mastodon in the near future though! And, honestly, all this "movement" or "exodus" being based on Elon Musk taking over, really?! How was Twitter any better before him?! The blatant censorship actually made many people flee Twitter long before ELon Musk and it was heavily infested with bots since day 1 and I find no utility in it. Twitter is an acute form of masochism trying to follow a "conversation" on it. I do have Twitter Blue and I've been a paying subscribero of Threadreader before, but they don't help. ANyway, just try to imagine the same spammy bots taking down all Mastodon servers when the super eager to leave Twitter move to the next cool thing... It won't be pretty! The Fail Whale will feel like a joke compared to what's about to come.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    If I may suggest, I recommend reading up on the concept of comparative advantage. Economics suggests that an org that spends more on self serving Mastodon or any service outside their core offering costs should be willing to offload that to a specialized service if the service offering is lower.
    - nikolay 4y ago
      I know no commercial organization running their own Mastodon - all instances I know are some non-commercial communities who are just too attached to their favorite domain. As communities run by volunteers, the cost is more important than the volunteer effort.
      - tomrod 4y ago
        > I know no commercial organization running their own Mastodon Key to remember is yet. The internet started as DARPAnet, after all.
        robin_reala 4y ago
        You’ve got an extra D, it was ARPANET.
        tomrod 4y ago
        Serves me right typing on a phone without my glasses.
      - cricalix 4y ago
        It may not quite count as commercial, but the EU as an entity has their own instance. European Commission and others are on it. https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about
        nikolay 4y ago
        Are we now giving bureaucrats as a positive example? I see so many people running closed servers with just a couple of accounts of it, which is another failure of Mastodon - not easily allowing people to use their own domains as identities instead of having to run a whole new server, which is a total waste, and not helping the ecosystem!

I mean, yes self hosting a Linux computer in the cloud requires certain skills and time. This is the basis of the business model for the biggest companies on the internet - we will run a service for you so you don’t have to run your own server. This is true even for hosting a basic HTML web page - a whole lot of people do not want to operate their own server, and this in no way means the service is bad.

nikolay 4y ago
Wrong! Hosting Mastodon is a different type of challenge, not to mention how much wasteful it is due to the poor choice of Ruby! Yes, Oracle Labs are trying Truffle, but it's not officially supported yet.
- derefr 4y ago
  What does the choice of programming language for a reference implementation have to do with the cost/benefit analysis of the protocol it implements?
  - nikolay 4y ago
    Oh, it's now a reference implementation... since when?! Do those people who climb on the Mastodon bandwagon know this is just a POC turned into a Product, which now competes with Twitter?! The language makes a huge difference as you need to deploy the whole Ruby toolchain, and front it with all the hard choices Rubyists had to deal with for ages to make it kinda work! You don't make a distributed competitor of Twitter following its own wrong design chocies! Mastodon is old, and it's a shaky foundation, and it should be rebuilt from scratch instead of disappointing the millions of people who suddenly like Dorsey more than Musk... although Dorsey is working on Bluesky, not Mastodon, or ActivityPub!
    - jsjohnst 4y ago
      > Oh, it's now a reference implementation... since when?! Do those people who climb on the Mastodon bandwagon know this is just a POC turned into a Product, which now competes with Twitter?! Might I suggest you take a deep breath and tell yourself ‘it’s ok, I don’t need to pick fights with random people over trivial things’? > The language makes a huge difference If a decentralized social network is a good thing (jury is out imho), guess it’s a good thing that there’s ActivityPub implementations in multiple wildly different languages then?
    - libraryatnight 4y ago
      What's your beef? Seriously.
      - nikolay 4y ago
        Seriously? We used to have comptuters with just 48KB RAM and created great software for it. Now, we have mobile apps like Facebook, which is over 2GB in size, and they are just a gigafat client of a server app!!! Mastodon is just like that - slow, wasteful, not scalable! And what's the worst is that people are getting hopeful about it not remembering how Ruby tanked Twitter back then! Doesn't anyone remember the Fail Whale?!
        libraryatnight 4y ago
        You need to calm down
        TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        For real.
        nikolay 4y ago
        Actually, I'm pretty calm - I can't say the same about the super excited users of Mastodon in the near future though! And, honestly, all this "movement" or "exodus" being based on Elon Musk taking over, really?! How was Twitter any better before him?! The blatant censorship actually made many people flee Twitter long before ELon Musk and it was heavily infested with bots since day 1 and I find no utility in it. Twitter is an acute form of masochism trying to follow a "conversation" on it. I do have Twitter Blue and I've been a paying subscribero of Threadreader before, but they don't help. ANyway, just try to imagine the same spammy bots taking down all Mastodon servers when the super eager to leave Twitter move to the next cool thing... It won't be pretty! The Fail Whale will feel like a joke compared to what's about to come.
- tomrod 4y ago
  If I may suggest, I recommend reading up on the concept of comparative advantage. Economics suggests that an org that spends more on self serving Mastodon or any service outside their core offering costs should be willing to offload that to a specialized service if the service offering is lower.
  - nikolay 4y ago
    I know no commercial organization running their own Mastodon - all instances I know are some non-commercial communities who are just too attached to their favorite domain. As communities run by volunteers, the cost is more important than the volunteer effort.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      > I know no commercial organization running their own Mastodon Key to remember is yet. The internet started as DARPAnet, after all.
      - robin_reala 4y ago
        You’ve got an extra D, it was ARPANET.
        tomrod 4y ago
        Serves me right typing on a phone without my glasses.
    - cricalix 4y ago
      It may not quite count as commercial, but the EU as an entity has their own instance. European Commission and others are on it. https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about
      - nikolay 4y ago
        Are we now giving bureaucrats as a positive example? I see so many people running closed servers with just a couple of accounts of it, which is another failure of Mastodon - not easily allowing people to use their own domains as identities instead of having to run a whole new server, which is a total waste, and not helping the ecosystem!