"An individual should be able to run an ActivityPub server for themself and their friends and family."
A lot of good conversation here. I find that questions including "should be able" are hard. I use it like, "People should be able to marry those they love," as in, our systems should let people do these things, and if they don't, there's something wrong with the systems and they need to be changed.
@evan this is precisely how I took the poll and why I voted strongly agree. Honestly, I’m a bit shocked in the sentiment that it should not be built for individuals to host and maintain their own servers.
SOME of that sentiment, at least in the past week or so, is coming from the finding that poorly managed AP servers are vulnerable to abuse and create problems for the broader network.
Mastodon is scrambling to mitigate some of that. but there are a lot of “friends and family” servers out there that need more support than just Dad or Aunt Liz are able to put in.
Unfortunately most folks are not careful enough in expressing their reasoned objections and just seem hostile.
@johannab @Archnemysis another option is that some of the manual processes we have now, like upgrades and blocklist management, could be automated, and those who want a bespoke manual server management experience could opt out.
@evan @Archnemysis Oh, definitely.
I really want to emphasize, to truly have the ability for everyone to run their Friends&Family instance, and actually have enough reach to even participate in federation, they need better support (tools and education) to be available.
I hope I didn’t seem to be excusing the bad attitude some small instances get thrown at them, but I really do think it is mishapprehension and misattribution of where the problem really lies.