The following was asked on a #Mastodon forum on #Reddit - I replied and a sort of converation started. I felt that it wa better to have the discussion where others with valuable inside could chip in so I have- with the OP’s permission posted the following:

For years I have the same question:

Is it useful to create your own Mastodon instance or any other fediverse instance?

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.

After the new political development in the USA, the fediverse got a new wave of interested people from all over the world, but the question stays.

In my opinion it makes only sense if you already have a community, like, if you’re an influencer or part of an NGO or similar projects with several people, who will support you creating and maintaining it with money and own time.

What do you think and do you own an instance or work on one?

  • abeorch@friendica.ginestes.esOP
    3·
    22 hours ago

    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…

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      22 hours ago

      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.