OK, so I have seen a few warnings now that my server might not be the best to be on, as the de facto standard that lots of folks flock to as ... :waves hands:
So --- where do I find the scuttlebutt (or, heaven forfend, ACTUAL DATA) about which servers have good moderation and good fediverse connectivity?
I'm happy to move. Once.
@jasonp AFAICS, the "fediverse connectivity" is the same on every instance (well, unless there unilateral blocking going on). If you depend on a large local or federated timeline on your instance (server), lookout for large(er) instances — but beware, depending on their funding and backing, they might run into similar issues as your current instance.
As for moderation, an instance in the EU should give you much free speech unless it's hate speech …
@wusel yeah, I am hitting up the api endpoints to get my followers in a queryable format and count up where they're from. That should work, maybe a little better than just keeping a tally by hand.
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.
@wusel Hm, I'm not sure that's the case if what I am reading --- that my instance is being silenced or blocked by others in the federation --- is accurate.
I have no problem with that per se but as the fairly popular post I'm cribbing from here predicts, I thought I was doing pretty well in seeing a decent slice of what's on Mastodon as a whole. If that's not true, I'd like to find a decent vantage point from which to take a look and make a comparison.
@jasonp https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=mastodon.social lists 35 out of ... 10,000+ instances. Read some of the "reasons" given there and make your own mind if that's an issue.
My issue with mastodon.social is simply it's size — a) it's not the way this federation is supposed to go, a significant portion of the user base on a few servers, b) the performance doesn't feel good (i. e. clicking on it's local timeline I get 404s), mostlikely a sizing issue.
@wusel Nice! That's the information I'm looking for.
Over the course of two weeks I feel like I've seen the responsiveness of mastodon.social wax and wane — and also seen one of the servers I might migrate to go down for a day entirely.
This is all fine with me, but your link to actual hard specific information is *exactly* what I'd hoped for. Thank you.
@jasonp Well, if you're into paying 1€/month (SEPA payment, no CC, thus basically EU-only), there is digitalcourage.social, run by an NGO that tries to somehow keep userbase and serverpower in balance. But there's a load of other instances that may ask for funding differently, or not at all ;) Think about mastodon.social: It probably won't vanish over night. My little private one might, if I loose interest of running it. Thus: check who's backing your future home instance ;)
@jasonp *Thing, actually.
@jasonp @wusel I don't think mastodon.social is going to be a pariah (well, don't hold me to it if I'm wrong). Eugen is more libertarian than I like, and I DO want a more outspoken anti-racist, queer, justice-forward instance (one that "gets it"), and I also think the ideal size of a big instance is in the 5 figures of users. But I'm in no big hurry.
@jasonp @wusel Wellll ... I may actually be wrong about that. I saw that weider.earth seems to be currently set to actually defederate from the two big instances in a week, and I follow people there. I do know that ours upgraded their mod teams very recently, so who knows if the conversations between the teams may prevent that. We'll see which level of cutting of ties will happen. In any event, I can reconnect when I found a better home. This is a busy and unstable time for the Mastodon.
Well, stating that server's rules ...
"Cultivate the Weird
Harassment will not be tolerated, oppressive behavior will not be tolerated, […]."
..., defederation a much larger, well know and AFAICS "sanely run" instance, even a pair of them, to me is a rather oppressive behavior. By their rules, they'd have to defederate themselves completely.
@wusel I absolutely don't agree that your conclusion follows from that premise, or that defederating from maston.social and mastodon.online constitutes oppression of any kind.
@jasonp It oppresses the content created by 240k users on maston.social and 87k users on mastodon.online to be seen by the 1k users on weirder.earth. If that's understood and known at all times by all those 1k users, than it might be ok by procedure, but it's still oppressing communication — for IMO questionable reasons I might add.
IMO you have to abide to your own rules; to blemish "oppressive behavior" but execute exactly that against another instances is not authentic.
@jasonp As for "seeing a decent slice of what's on Mastodon as a whole", your're mostly right. That's currently an issue where the idea – everyone is self-hosting – doesn't meet the technology – federaded timeline of one's server consist of stuff the user's subscribe to on other servers –; hopefully this will change over time ...
@jasonp That said, I still haven't found a way to draw myself a "Map of the Fediverse".
Hence, best guess would be to check where those you follow reside, check their instances T&C and make your choice ...