[HN Gopher] Togethr: Own Mastodon-compatible decentralized socia...
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Togethr: Own Mastodon-compatible decentralized social network
instance
Author : MattJ100
Score : 87 points
Date : 2022-05-05 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (togethr.party)
(TXT) w3m dump (togethr.party)
| colpabar wrote:
| Off topic, but the whole "let's just remove the 'e' from a word
| that ends in 'er'" naming trend needs to die.
| [deleted]
| _hzw wrote:
| I would rather run a Bookwyrm [0] instance.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/mouse-reeve/bookwyrm
| rrix2 wrote:
| looks cool, but that's a totally different sort of user
| experience that happens to use the same ActivityPub layer, no?
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| If there is interest in other formats and people are willing to
| pay on our model for them we can likely add instance types for
| things like this.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Cool, I like seeing more commercial vendors supporting Mastodon.
| I support mastodon.social and use them [1].
|
| I support Elon Musk buying Twitter and charging $2/month for a
| verified account, etc., but I also love seeing a major uptake on
| Mastodon-based decentralized services.
|
| [1] https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson
| yupyup54133 wrote:
| Cool but I'd much rather see someone sell a little server box
| where all I would need to do is plug it into my router and open
| up a port.
|
| IE: If we are going to decentralize with Mastodon-style software
| lets actually decentralize the hardware used to host the system.
| ay wrote:
| You would still need the domain setup, etc... or would you be
| happy to use your hardware and some free subdomain from
| elsewhere ?
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| I think it's something that a vanity subdomain would be fine
| for the base case, with an optional upsell for a custom
| domain. The self-hosted box would need to have some way to
| dynamically update DNS, as the average consumer doesn't have
| a static IP.
| mxuribe wrote:
| You're not wrong. But, i feel that this type of (paid) offering
| is the next best thing. What we need is many, many more paid
| providers, which helps decentralize things a little at least
| (and of course helps those less techie than some)...until your
| proposed solution is more easily implementable by a greater
| swath of the interested population.
| js4ever wrote:
| I believe it will come with time, we already have IPv6 and
| microservers like Pi, but then users have to secure,
| update,backup, monitor and upgrade the software and hardware
| regularly ... There is no solution yet for that.
|
| So it's definitely an easier solution to use a managed
| service. BTW here is another Mastodon provider:
| https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon
|
| Disclaimer: I work there
| harlanji wrote:
| Exactly. The key is that it's a paid service. And it looks to
| be based on Pleroma and they will export data and transfer
| domains upon request. As long as it stays like that and
| that's the bar across providers everyone wins.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Curious: sell at what price.
|
| This is something I have thought about for many years. If we
| have small form factor computers that sell for, say, $5-$25 why
| not distribute pre-configured, free, open source servers on
| well-understood hardware^1 instead of having to test on various
| different hardware possibilities, not all of them well-
| understood, or making assumptions about what hardware people
| should have available. IMO, there is value in server
| configuration. A purchaser could choose to compile and install
| the software herself but having an example of a working
| configuration can be invaluable. For me, good examples are
| usually worth more than countless pages of verbose
| documentation. The question I have is the dollar amount of that
| value.
|
| The example I have thought about in the past, rightly or
| wrongly, is the WRT54G and what became OpenWRT. To me, focusing
| on one item of hardware initially has advantages. That is
| generally what vendors of off-the-shelf products do. Yet with
| open source software, there is usually an expectation that it
| must work on a variety of hardware, which is likely to make
| things more complicated.
|
| 1. I am not implying this has never been done or that it isn't
| still happening.
| tedunangst wrote:
| If I sell you a computer for $5 and you email me questions
| about how to configure DNS, what kind of reply are you
| expecting?
| [deleted]
| neltnerb wrote:
| What are the odds the router itself can act as a Mastodon
| server with some external storage? I'm not sure how resource
| intensive Mastodon is in practice.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Mastodon is _very_ RAM hungry. Not going to run on most
| routers.
| eloisant wrote:
| It probably depends on the load? It's a Rails app AFAIK so
| if the load is low (which is likely for a family or group
| of friends) it should be able to run anywhere.
| andrewzah wrote:
| I don't think the average router would be able to run much of
| anything, not to mention how insecure the average router is
| since people don't update them.
|
| Mastodon is very resource heavy, I couldn't get it to run on
| a raspberry pi 3b. Pleroma is an alternative to mastodon that
| is very light on resources, I'd recommend that personally.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| I don't know that I'd call Pleroma "very light", but it's
| very light compared to Mastodon for sure.
| harlanji wrote:
| I can easily run Pleroma on 1G VPS and Pi3s; the heaviest
| part is the Postgres server, which can itself be tuned to
| be pretty light. It relies on PG's native JSON data type
| which is cool. I run a couple instances and poked around
| with it for a few hours. I'd love to see SQLite support
| in Pleroma given that it allegedly has JSON now; there is
| a 2 year old ticket on their GitLab [1] mentioning it tho
| I've not spiked in to see if it's 100% plausible to port.
| Pleroma is written with Elixir that has a DB abstraction
| library that supports SQLite, I was just looking into it
| this week.
|
| Even if SQLite JSON isn't sufficient it could be realized
| with string columns for now, and indeed SQLite is
| recommended by Library of Congress for archival storage
| and used by iPhone so I think it's a solid way to expand
| Pleroma even if native JSON is not sufficient.
|
| If anyone wants to pay me to do this as open source I'd
| jump, contact in bio. I don't know Elixir yet but am
| motivated and have 15+ years of dev experience in all
| kinds of systems, and experience in the adjacent parts.
|
| 1.
| https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/-/issues/1333
| rglullis wrote:
| You can run Pleroma (with its database) on a raspberry pi
| with 1GB RAM. A single-user instance of Mastodon will
| require 8GB to run comfortably.
|
| I think the main issue of Mastodon is that its search
| completely reliant on elasticsearch, while Pleroma tries
| to go by only with PostgreSQL FTS?
| clankyclanker wrote:
| Looks like the Freedombox.org folks are shipping that now, for
| EUR70:
|
| https://freedombox.org/buy/
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| I would love to do this, but it's a lot more work to maintain
| that kind of thing for most users. At least with Togethr we let
| you choose from many different data centres so the instances
| won't all be in the same place.
| rglullis wrote:
| What you want is achievable with https://dappnode.io
| wmf wrote:
| Helm looks pretty cool although it's expensive and they only
| have two apps (email and OwnCloud):
| https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2
| kornhole wrote:
| I have Mastodon, mail, XMPP, Coturn, and Nextcloud instances
| all running on a single Raspberry PI setup quite easily thanks
| to yunohost.org. They have ISO's for just about any hardware or
| a VPS.
|
| Hostman and Mastohost are among the other managed hosters of
| fediverse instances.
| throwaway15908 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be feasible to replace this "get your own domain"
| part just by letting tor doing the lookup for some introduced
| .onion site. My reasoning is, that this could get much faster
| adoption rates and/but is also self hosted on a single client
| device.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| The benefit of giving people free domains is they work already
| with the fediverse we have and make more sense to regular folk
| than onion names.
| packetlost wrote:
| Why would I want this over something like mastodon.social or
| SDF's Mastodon? $7/month seems very steep for what amounts to the
| ability to have a custom domain and admin responsibility.
| ultimape wrote:
| This appears to be a managed hosting provider offering access
| to a pleroma instance underneath, not a software package.
| packetlost wrote:
| That's sort of my point. Managed hosting is exactly what I
| get for free from SDF (or mastodon.social), so what's the
| benefit?
| masukomi wrote:
| _you_ don't get managed hosting from mastodon.social the
| site owner does (if they used a service like this). You
| just get an account that someone else manages the
| infrastructure beneath.
|
| This gives you your own instance, which in addition to
| using your own domain, means you can can set the rules of
| the server (what kind of speech is and isn't allowed), you
| can boot people you don't want. You can control who gets
| in. you can control what other servers are blocked (i
| assume that is an option in pleroma too).
| qznc wrote:
| Your own domain?
| ruined wrote:
| you get to set your own federation rules, and perform your
| own moderation.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| And switch to self-hosting or another hosting company
| whenever you want, never need to change your address
| because you own the domain. Control and freedom.
|
| Also support from humans who are paid to support you.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I agree, but I was concerned if mastodon.social was
| sufficiently funded so I started giving them a tiny amount
| of money every month.
|
| I suppose it would be good to have Mastodon on my own
| domain, but I really don't care that much (I have had my
| website on my own domain for 30+ years).
| jgfrgcss wrote:
| A clear business model and alignment of interests, as a
| customer. Also no lock in since the customer owns their
| domain.
|
| How is SDF funded? How can anyone be certain it will
| continue to be funded, if it offers a service gratis that
| costs the provider money to operate? Is that funding source
| aligned with my beliefs and interests? These are questions
| you don't have when you just pay for things.
|
| Another example: I use FastMail with a custom domain. Yes,
| I could just use Gmail, but I don't, for the reasons listed
| above.
| the_common_man wrote:
| But you can't use Gmail with a custom domain for free. I
| bet that's a decision point
| TurkTurkleton wrote:
| You can't use Fastmail for free at all, custom domain or
| no.
| the_common_man wrote:
| Yes. But what I am saying is since gmail becomes paid for
| custom domains, you _then_ decide, you might as well pay
| someone else.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| SDF has been a self-sustaining non-profit since the 80's.
| I'm much more skeptical of a newcomer than of them,
| personally
| riffic wrote:
| obviously it't not for you.
|
| perhaps there is another end user in mind (like
| groups/organizations)
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(page generated 2022-05-05 23:01 UTC)