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So I setup a PDS (from Digital Ocean) and hooked it up to Bluesky just to see how that works. Like many things, once I've figured something out, I lose interest (probably a character flaw), but yeah, I deleted my account on X2, but now I'm curious:
How much tougher/more complex is setting up an instance here on Mastodon than that PDS was for Bluesky? Anyone have experience with both?
@incre_ment I don't know, but my understanding is that Mastodon is very nearly the worst case scenario of complexity and cost setting up a fedi server out of all the options
@technomancy
Oh jeez, ok. 1 / sold!
@incre_ment for example on my recent setup of gotosocial, most of the work was "stuff you would need to do for any service you stand up" like starting a VPS and adding DNS; outside that it's maybe 10 minutes work to install and configure it
I did pleroma/akkoma a few years ago and it was more work but not that much more; still much, much simpler than installing masto
@technomancy
Got it. Thanks for the perspective. It took me awhile to get the DNS all setup on the PDS (and setting this one specific required SSL setting in Cloudflare). I suspect someone who actually knew what they were doing could of done it in minutes. That's why I make GIFs and not websites! I'll probably stick to my current instance for now.
@incre_ment yeah, I think there is a lot of room to improve the process still with regard to that kind of thing; it's really easy to get wrong in ways that are annoying to debug (as a fedi problem but also as a broader user-empowerment problem for oss in general)
but (and you probably do understand this already) comparing a PDS to a full fedi node isn't really a 1:1 comparison because the PDS is useless on its own and will only ever be accessed thru the centralized index, which is run by engineers who are accountable to shareholders
it seems like their claims of decentralization keep coming back to the theoretical possibility that someone else could run an index, but it sounds like that is very far away from reality right now
@technomancy Yeah, I'm not convinced either. I feel like 99% of the user-base won't have the appetite for a PDS. I also think that if (when?) it crosses some threshold of popularity and enters the main stream zeitgeist, the "federative properties" of the site could be one of the first features on the shareholder driven chopping block. Why hold on to something that could end up being incredibly niche on your popular website if it means a decrease in accessible user data? By the time we're seeing Bluesky logos on ESPN, they won't care about the federation any more. We've seen how this plays out. It's a shame so many continue to fall for it.
those who won't learn from history are doomed to repeat it
those who do learn from history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it and go "seriously? not this shit again??"