hey you know what would be a very interesting way to scale large instances
literally make a second mastodon.social
and redirect all new users there, the two hosted independently and maybe even managed differently or organized in regions
and potentially some addition that help the two share the local timeline efficiently
i mean that's how the network is *designed* to scale
@CobaltVelvet yeah but the issue here is that a lot of blogs/articles/new users who don't know better link directly to mastodon.social. so yeah i could open another instance but it wouldn't like, help much? unless we sneakily redirect from our frontpage to the other one, but that would mess with people who want to login
@kurisu @CobaltVelvet a prominent banner is the only option to do this but i don't know how effective it would really be. in the past when we closed sign ups new people thought "mastodon is closed", not "mastodon.social is closed", despite all the text explaining otherwise.
@kurisu @CobaltVelvet also - which instance to link to? (linking to the picker is not suuuuper effective tbh, too much choice). if you want *me* to host another instance, well, it's got its benefits (my reputation, track record) but also downsides (centralization on me as a person)
