4 ms·

There's a difference between running your own instance for you or your own staff and running one for the public. I should be able to follow @ClarkKent@mastodon

by edent 4y ago

There's a difference between running your own instance for you or your own staff and running one for the public. I should be able to follow @ClarkKent@mastodon.daily-planet.info - that'll tell me that the account is who it says it is. But mastodon.daily-planet.info absolutely shouldn't have a public registration. Running a social network isn't for the faint-hearted. But running a publishing platform should be as simple as running a website.

dylan604 4y ago
>But running a publishing platform should be as simple as running a website. Why is this consider stupidly easy? What kind of website are talking about, because the websites I run and have run in the past are not so simple
- edent 4y ago
  I didn't say "stupidly easy". I said "as simple as". If you're running a basic WordPress / CMS - then running Mastodon should be as simple as that (i.e. pay someone to host and run). If you're running a global website with a load of subdomains, custom features, CDNs, etc - then running Mastodon should be as simple as your existing infrastructure.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - jermaustin1 4y ago
      WordPress is as easy as websites get. My 70 year old father runs a handful of them. They are 1 click to install, and have a built in plugin system to add extra features. Running WP is easy for the majority of users.
      - TylerE 4y ago
        Yes. Until gramps forgets to update and he gets owned by scriptkiddies...usually via a hole in one of those plugins.
        jermaustin1 4y ago
        He pays $40/mo for all of his sites, and included in that is hourly backups rolling for multiple days, security audits, automatic updates, and the ability to lock down logins to a specific IP. In the 8 years of hosting with wordpress, he's been under constant automated attack, and never once has a site been compromised. I doubt that is because he is some super computer genius, and more likely its just that his host has a decent offering. But point still stands, if a host allows you to click a button to launch a wordpress site, that is still easy to do.
        Fuzzwah 4y ago
        The difference in what people think of as "running a website" is at play in this conversation. Administering a website hosted by WordPress.com isn't the same level of difficulty as being an admin of a LAMP based website on bare metal.
        TylerE 4y ago
        Or (from personal experience helping multiple friends) running Wordpress on a commodity cpanel host.
  - amyjess 4y ago
    This is true to an extent, but the problem with Mastodon is that you have to be really careful about who you federate with. Hosting your own Mastodon is like hosting your own email in that unless you set up your anti-spam capabilities perfectly, you will get permanently blackholed by the wider community. Except it's not just spam. Most of the wider fediverse will block your instance if you federate with instances that host nazis, child porn, etc. Which means the first thing you need to do when setting up your instance is gather a list of all those types and block them. Sure, you can say you're committed to "free speech" or whatever, but if all the large servers slam the door in your face your users will have nobody to talk to. Also, with the way Mastodon works, if your instance federates with another, your instance hosts a cached copy of all of their stuff that appears on your users' timelines. Which means you might run afoul of your host's TOS or even local laws. If you're in Germany and some American nazi's post saying "kill the Jews" gets federated onto your instance, you might be looking at serious legal trouble. Or even if you're not in one of those countries, you might get booted off AWS or Azure for hosting content against their TOS. So sure, it's as easy enough as any other webapp to launch into your infra, but maintaining a functioning Mastodon instance that doesn't get blocked by the wider fediverse or brings down the wrath of your hosting company or law enforcement on you is hard.
    - saurik 4y ago
      I don't understand the "why" behind the second paragraph. (In contrast, you explain the tech more for the third paragraph.) To do a callback to the first paragraph, this is very unlike email: my email server barely has a working spam filter and explicitly will never actively reject email (or just organizes and tags it differently), and yet I am able to send and receive email from large hosts (or at least could until I lost my ancient IP address due to my colo provider moving to a different state, for which I weep; but that is an entirely unrelated issue, afaik ;P), as who else I email is none of their business. What about the tech of Mastadon makes other nodes refuse to "federate with" me if I "federate with" something they don't like?
      - boyter 4y ago
        What about the tech of Mastadon makes other nodes refuse to "federate with" me if I "federate with" something they don't like? Nothing. The blocking situation on the fediverse is arcane at best.

by edent 4y ago

dylan604 4y ago

>But running a publishing platform should be as simple as running a website. Why is this consider stupidly easy? What kind of website are talking about, because the websites I run and have run in the past are not so simple

edent 4y ago
I didn't say "stupidly easy". I said "as simple as". If you're running a basic WordPress / CMS - then running Mastodon should be as simple as that (i.e. pay someone to host and run). If you're running a global website with a load of subdomains, custom features, CDNs, etc - then running Mastodon should be as simple as your existing infrastructure.
- dylan604 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - jermaustin1 4y ago
    WordPress is as easy as websites get. My 70 year old father runs a handful of them. They are 1 click to install, and have a built in plugin system to add extra features. Running WP is easy for the majority of users.
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Yes. Until gramps forgets to update and he gets owned by scriptkiddies...usually via a hole in one of those plugins.
      - jermaustin1 4y ago
        He pays $40/mo for all of his sites, and included in that is hourly backups rolling for multiple days, security audits, automatic updates, and the ability to lock down logins to a specific IP. In the 8 years of hosting with wordpress, he's been under constant automated attack, and never once has a site been compromised. I doubt that is because he is some super computer genius, and more likely its just that his host has a decent offering. But point still stands, if a host allows you to click a button to launch a wordpress site, that is still easy to do.
        Fuzzwah 4y ago
        The difference in what people think of as "running a website" is at play in this conversation. Administering a website hosted by WordPress.com isn't the same level of difficulty as being an admin of a LAMP based website on bare metal.
        TylerE 4y ago
        Or (from personal experience helping multiple friends) running Wordpress on a commodity cpanel host.
- amyjess 4y ago
  This is true to an extent, but the problem with Mastodon is that you have to be really careful about who you federate with. Hosting your own Mastodon is like hosting your own email in that unless you set up your anti-spam capabilities perfectly, you will get permanently blackholed by the wider community. Except it's not just spam. Most of the wider fediverse will block your instance if you federate with instances that host nazis, child porn, etc. Which means the first thing you need to do when setting up your instance is gather a list of all those types and block them. Sure, you can say you're committed to "free speech" or whatever, but if all the large servers slam the door in your face your users will have nobody to talk to. Also, with the way Mastodon works, if your instance federates with another, your instance hosts a cached copy of all of their stuff that appears on your users' timelines. Which means you might run afoul of your host's TOS or even local laws. If you're in Germany and some American nazi's post saying "kill the Jews" gets federated onto your instance, you might be looking at serious legal trouble. Or even if you're not in one of those countries, you might get booted off AWS or Azure for hosting content against their TOS. So sure, it's as easy enough as any other webapp to launch into your infra, but maintaining a functioning Mastodon instance that doesn't get blocked by the wider fediverse or brings down the wrath of your hosting company or law enforcement on you is hard.
  - saurik 4y ago
    I don't understand the "why" behind the second paragraph. (In contrast, you explain the tech more for the third paragraph.) To do a callback to the first paragraph, this is very unlike email: my email server barely has a working spam filter and explicitly will never actively reject email (or just organizes and tags it differently), and yet I am able to send and receive email from large hosts (or at least could until I lost my ancient IP address due to my colo provider moving to a different state, for which I weep; but that is an entirely unrelated issue, afaik ;P), as who else I email is none of their business. What about the tech of Mastadon makes other nodes refuse to "federate with" me if I "federate with" something they don't like?
    - boyter 4y ago
      What about the tech of Mastadon makes other nodes refuse to "federate with" me if I "federate with" something they don't like? Nothing. The blocking situation on the fediverse is arcane at best.