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Dan Gillmor

I'm working on an experiment to create a fediverse outpost for my small town, as a possible approach to supplementing or (ideally) replacing the Facebook group that currently is the source of news in the community.

Advice on next steps? Looking at various things now e.g.

-- Find a hosting service specialilzing in Mastodon?

-- Install myself at the hosting company I use for my blog?

-- Any good guides for a project like this?

@dangillmor

  1. masto.host / @mastohost
  2. You can probably set up mastodon, akkoma, shrimpkey, or whatever in your existing hosting company.
  3. Not sure, but the projects probably have documentation :)
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Masto.hostMasto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon HostingMasto.host was built from the ground up to make running a Mastodon instance easy.
@dangillmor
I'm not an expert of any sort in the hosting, but from observing a friend of mine's agonizing and mysterious problems hosting a small, 6-8 user Mastodon instance versus my experience with a 2-user Akkoma instance, I'd at least *suggest* looking at it as a Fediverse/ActivityPub compatible alternative.

@dangillmor

I'd recommend using your blog since you know it already and make a concerted effort to SEO* it _first_ as a community replacement for the FB group, test the blog beforehand with some key people to work out anything, then do a huge announcement to replace the FB group, run it for a year then shutdown and leave a link to fwd to the blog after a year.

Build a critical mass by promotion to the key people in the community. Once you get the buy in at +40% the rest will go to the tipping point when the blog is the answer after a year. Maybe do a cross post for 6 months, gradually putting everything on the blog vs. the FB group.

Bonus points if it can be #fediverse enabled!

* SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) is the most important part as when people use a search engine they find your service at the _first page_ on both Bing & Google.

@dangillmor
Its a tough road. Because many people still use FB getting them to switch can be hard.

I tried to move people off of a private FB group and inertia was hard to build.

Most still remain there still and are more likely to use threads.net than Mastodon.

I think if I knew then what I know now I would have spent time to build a set of recommended follows to help people get started. The admin interface has ability to set this up.

@dangillmor
I would suggest talking with @stux. He might be able to provide some guidance to help you make a choice.

@dangillmor I would definitely add RSS feeds from relevant local services like police, fire, library, schools, regional weather

@dangillmor Is Mastodon the correct software to run here? Friendica sounds like (maybe?) a closer match.

@stux @dangillmor AFAIK various LGBT instances have had issues (as in being kicked off of it) with Hetzner, which may or may not be something that you want to take into consideration.

@dangillmor I was *just* poking around activitypub projects trying to figure out what collection could be put together to start a local alternative to FB and Reddit local subreddits.

So no actual advice but just acknowledging this is an important discussion

@Olyindivisible @emmettoconnell @dangillmor I have a small host that I'm fitting out for my mastodon account. I've been thinking about PeerTube as well but have just started looking at what that means.

@dangillmor
Not sure if Masto.host fits your bill or not.

Perhaps use a fediverse provider with a Facebook-like interface that supports groups? There are a few of these.
@dangillmor @mikedev I personally use #Friendica as it supports most of the usage cases of Facebook, including groups.

@dangillmor Micro blogs like Mastodon where "Many" people can post a Paragraph and and Image. to convey their opinions to the readers.👍

@dangillmor

Standing up a Mastodon instance is trivial.

Convening a community is the hard part.

It's marketing and management and fundraising.

Facebook groups work because people are already using Facebook for other purposes. Persuading people to switch is an uphill battle even if it's a much nicer hill.

@dangillmor

It might be easier to set up and run, as well as much easier for non-technical people to use, if you did something like #Wordpress hooked up to the fediverse. I'm not a Wordpress fan, but it's definitely easier for many users for #publishing content, hosting comments sections, etc, and has a ton of extensions available.

There are also plenty of #managed Wordpress hosts, though I don't know if any offer turnkey publishing to the fediverse in their configs.

@dangillmor just make shure to not use #Hetzner as they are proven to not just be inconsistent pricks but literally cave in to racist trolls and russian warrants...

@dangillmor
There is a tradeoff you may wish to consider: whether you're willing to commit to web administration, or stick to existing hosting providers.

If your town hosts its own services, you get potential benefits down the road:
1. Some forks (e.g. hometown) will let people post messages only visible on your instance; I've found this feeling of privacy gives people a lot more incentive to discuss local topics, post local photos, ask local questions.
2. The next time your town needs a software solution (calendars, classified ads, file sharing, etc) you have an existing infrastructure to plug those services into.

The difficulty here is finding 1-2 tech people who can spare ~5h a week (plus an upfront cost) but that might be reasonable for a town-sized community :)

@dangillmor

Anyhow.

If you go down the self-hosting route, I'd personally recommend looking at coopcloud.tech/ - their tools have been amazing at cutting our administration costs and making that 5 person-hours/week a reasonable number.

If you want to use an existing no-hassle provider, I've heard good things about masto.host

coopcloud.techThe Co-op Cloud

@dangillmor you might look at Discord as an option. A bit like Slack, but free. I’ve used it successfully in teaching.

@kerim Another proprietary platform isn't on my list...

@dangillmor Howdy, @majorlinux May be someone that would be interested in helping out here.

@dangillmor get a lawyer who can respond (in a timely manner) to DMCA takedown notices and CSAM reports.

I am NOT an expert, but vaguely remember some of the stuff from @darnell 's account when he was working some of this stuff out and reporting on it. From what I remember, it doesn't take much to get into hot water in this area.

@dangillmor Ansible or Docker are the best manageable updated methods that I've seen so far... As far as hosting, I've not found advantages with specialized hosting for mastodon.

@dangillmor No matter what software you choose, you probably don’t want to deal with the steady stream of software update installs, and someone has to, to stay ahead of security exploits. So masto.host if you go with mastodon, or if you pick another suggested platform, find someone who specializes in hosting that.

@dangillmor PS also: is there a quorum in the community already wanting to move off FB, or is it your personal desire? Can you get the most prolific posters to come along?