catto on Nostr: I have been hosting and maintaining a fedi server with 1-2 users and a couple years ...
I have been hosting and maintaining a fedi server with 1-2 users and a couple years ago one with 10+ users for about two years now, and had accounts on other servers before that and here are some thoughts I couldn't really put into words yet until now. Some good, some bad so here we go:
Fragmentation is still a problem. Both by technology and by admin moderation. Even with very liberal settings and not being blocked by anyone I find myself having 10 tabs open with different instances at any given time just to get the "full picture" of a conversation. Sometimes not even that is enough, and your instance sees posts that not even the origin instance is displaying and so on. Lately, a lot of instances outright block viewing a post on their instance unless you're logged in. It's not a dealbreaker though and I understand that it will always be a problem due to Fedi's design.
To block or not to block an instance? By far the biggest dilemma when running an instance yourself. Sure if a server is entirely dedicated towards illegal things, the answer is very simple. But most of them are not as simple. Most of the time only a handful of people on an instance are terrible people. Should you just block them on your profile but then leave your other users on your instance to fend for themselves? Do you block the entire instance, cutting off communications with people you know?
No matter what your stance on moderation is, moderating the fediverse is Sisyphean labor and you will never be finished. I understand that many take more drastic measures as a result of that like disabling the federated timeline, publicly accessible posts and so on.
Fedi not having good post discovery is a blessing in disguise. Every other social media platform is, always was or has become a ragebait hellscape but Fedi is not.
The people on here are very cool!
My hot take is that Fedi will remain stagnant regarding user growth but that's okay. The other platforms have proven that more people does not lead to a better and more healthy experience for it's users. If anything I think Fedi would collapse if it would get the same userbase and attention as the other sites, even if just for mostly technical and regulatory reasons.
But in the end I still love Fedi and the many awesome people I meet on here. If this ship ever goes down you will likely not find me on X Threads or whatever else will try to squeeze out thousands of hours of my life with rage, hatred and bait. I love Fedi and I'm glad that it will be my last social media.
Fragmentation is still a problem. Both by technology and by admin moderation. Even with very liberal settings and not being blocked by anyone I find myself having 10 tabs open with different instances at any given time just to get the "full picture" of a conversation. Sometimes not even that is enough, and your instance sees posts that not even the origin instance is displaying and so on. Lately, a lot of instances outright block viewing a post on their instance unless you're logged in. It's not a dealbreaker though and I understand that it will always be a problem due to Fedi's design.
To block or not to block an instance? By far the biggest dilemma when running an instance yourself. Sure if a server is entirely dedicated towards illegal things, the answer is very simple. But most of them are not as simple. Most of the time only a handful of people on an instance are terrible people. Should you just block them on your profile but then leave your other users on your instance to fend for themselves? Do you block the entire instance, cutting off communications with people you know?
No matter what your stance on moderation is, moderating the fediverse is Sisyphean labor and you will never be finished. I understand that many take more drastic measures as a result of that like disabling the federated timeline, publicly accessible posts and so on.
Fedi not having good post discovery is a blessing in disguise. Every other social media platform is, always was or has become a ragebait hellscape but Fedi is not.
The people on here are very cool!
My hot take is that Fedi will remain stagnant regarding user growth but that's okay. The other platforms have proven that more people does not lead to a better and more healthy experience for it's users. If anything I think Fedi would collapse if it would get the same userbase and attention as the other sites, even if just for mostly technical and regulatory reasons.
But in the end I still love Fedi and the many awesome people I meet on here. If this ship ever goes down you will likely not find me on X Threads or whatever else will try to squeeze out thousands of hours of my life with rage, hatred and bait. I love Fedi and I'm glad that it will be my last social media.