Just remember that you will be required to remove any illegal content that people post. I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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To which I replied:
To which I replied :
Have a look at lemmy.world/c/selfhosted - If you have a group of family or friends I think its a good way to get them on board and curate an instance that is useful for them.
Doesnt need to be #Mastodon - could be #Friendica or #Gotosocial
Lots of ways to simplify the process - I use #Yunohost gives me Email, Nextcloud and ActivityPub for friends and family
Ideally Id eventually like to see something like this packaged into a router like #openwrtone One
And they added:
> Have a look at lemmy.world/c/selfhosted - If you have a group of family >or friends I think its a good way to get them on board and curate an instance
> that is useful for them.
interesting use case, but is it possible to separate friends and family members on the instance somehow? Because it sounds really good to protect all people who are close to you, but they don't have to know what the "other chatroom" is about.
And the link gave me flashbacks, because I tried to create my own lemmy instance. I worked every day for a month on it to throw it away in the end. It had so many bugs and a few seconds after my instance was online, I had weird conversations in my database, which couldn't be seen in the UI. And talking about the issues with the creator of lemmy was a little bit a pain, too.
After this, I've started a classical forum (flarum), because it looked like the fediverse is doing weird things, like polluting the database with garbage.
> Doesnt need to be Mastodon - could be Friendica or Gotosocial
I don't get the concept of gotosocial? It's like having a Mastodon instance with yourself. How do people find you?
I guess it's not made for creators, but for nerdy consumers, right?
> Lots of ways to simplify the process - I use Yunohost gives me Email, >Nextcloud and ActivityPub for friends and family
That's for sure, but there is still the problem that it must be maintained and if you already have a community, it would be really easy, but without a community or even people who know what this is, you have to do it all by your own. This could be stressful and depressing (imho).
> Ideally Id eventually like to see something like this packaged into a router like > OpenWrt One
gotosocial looks like it could work, but not for the whole family :D
Now I can't help them when it comes to #gotosocial - So perhaps others can chip in.
My thoughts were that with separate subdomains (or domains ) in Yunohost you can separate out instances for Family/Friends and the group they belong to but
I'm also aware that some #ActivityPub servers can run multiple separte instances for different groups while optimising federation - I think #takake did that - but again I don't know much about that approach -
When it comes to the questiona bout being maintained. THat is a question a group I belong to has been considering since they worry about having to maintain infrastructure for a Sports Club and don't want to get bogged down in keeping the lights on - Here I guess I think using templates where possible (which I think Yunohost is kind of ) and professional support for #Opensource solutions might come in handy . (people like #autonomic I guess - or just having enough people in your group to provide the support..
GoToSocial is just another Fediverse software that works with multiple users like any other. The difference is really only that it is tuned more towards smaller instances and as a result is easier to set up and maintain. It also assumes most people will be using a mobile app with it anyways and thus the built in webclient is very bare bones. It does work fine with external webclients like Phanpy though.
After this, I've started a classical forum (flarum)
NodeBB recently added fediverse support
If you don't plan on supporting this for at least a few years I would say no.
If you don't expect to have a decent local userbase I would say no (local in the sense of a common interest, e.g. it might be useful to host an instance for all members of even a small company if you expect a decent amount of posts).
If it's just you and your family (let's be honest: it's just you) I would say no.
The fediverse can federate, but if everyone is using their own server it's just a fancy peer to peer network.
@EarMaster I'm going to say that if you are doing it for wider family that might still be worth it (given that you can get a private stream and your network feed might be more relevant for other family members - But then it is a case of bringing your family along with you.. If you are doing other stuff for them (email, file sharing , device management - Then maybe an ActivityPub server becomes a bit of an addon
IMO no.
Small instances can have issues with federation and now showing all replies/content.
There's also the aspect that you'll need to moderate content stored on your server, if someone posts something illegal and your server caches it, you're responsible for cleaning it up.
Many admins say it is a lot of work and they put a lot of effort, money and energy in it. Some even close their instance after few years, because it is just too much.
I would say you should limit the number of active accounts. Probably to a few hundred at most in the beginning. Close registration when things start to become too much. Re-evaluate periodically and re-open as necessary/desired. There's no reason you have to allow thousands of people on your instance.
@Ulrich Ia really think the idea of having a 'common bond' is a good idea to stick to. Whether thats 'my family ' or ' members of my sailing club' or ' people i went to school with' Anything beyond that you want some legal structures between you and the users to provide a level of protection
Useful? No. Profitable? No. Fun? For some people. That's why they do it.
Mastodon for personal use: not so much as replies don't federate with main tweet.
Mastodon for small group: Maybe.
Lemmy: If you want to host a CDN-like node then yes,
but not everyone likes forum style discussion.
I didn't use Frendrica Sharkey or Pixelfed enough to form my own opinion.
The reason to host your own instances is altruism. You help out the community with decentralisation and also absorb some of the bandwidth and storage costs from other instances. This is necessary for the Fediverse to survive.
But another instance also increases the required bandwidth and data usage for all other federated instances
Yes but if your instance holds a decent population then it's a net benefit