mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

377K
active users

Most Fediverse communities operate on donations, and overall our survey participants are not generating enough money to cover costs.

Very few moderators are receiving any compensation for their labour.

This is your reminder to donate to your admin if you’re able to.

@iftas@mastodon.iftas.org I was under the impression most Fediverse communities operate just on the whims of some guy hosting a server for his friends. The megaservers need donations to sustain themselves, but in general we shouldn't have megaservers to begin with anyway. The Fediverse strives on a large number of small instances, not a small number of large instances.

Reminder to self-host a Fediverse instance, and to spread out across the platform if you're able to.

@nikclayton@mastodon.social @iftas@mastodon.iftas.org There's a lesson here, but I don't think you see the same one.

If your server costs were 500 bucks, you were hosting an instance that's too large. The reason the impact is high, is because they were too large of an instance. No instance should have more than 200 active users. If they kept it small, the cost would've been negligible, and any issues that wouldve prevented them from continuing the service would have had a minor impact on the Fediverse as a whole.

The lesson is to stick to small instances, and have a huge amount of it. Don't try to be a megaserver, that's how it becomes unsustainable.

@tyil @iftas Nope.

It's unsustainable because people aren't paying for the service they receive.

Suggesting a server cap of 200 users is absolutely wild. For one thing, you don't benefit from any economies of scale. The lack of moderation coverage alone leaves your users exposed to harassment.

@nikclayton@mastodon.social @iftas@mastodon.iftas.org

It's unsustainable because people aren't paying for the service they receive.
Which is only a problem when the costs are too high to be just a hobby. Ergo, you want smaller servers. But I can repeat this again and again in many different ways, if you don't want to listen there's no reason to keep this going.