I am thinking about hosting my own Mastodon server from home on a Raspberry Pi (Pi4 8GB)?

  1. Are there good tutorials out there?
  2. What’s the annual cost just to host yourself?

@linux @nixCraft @raspberrypi

  • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
    51·
    9 months ago

    Have you looked into nostr? It offers most of the same features of Mastodon except that:

    • Your identity is not tied to your instance. If your instance closes up shop, you keep all your followers, followees, DMs, etc
    • You can send encrypted DMs, so your instance admin can’t read them
    • Cool tipping functionality so you can tip people if you like their posts. Or don’t use it. It’s optional.
    • Most nostr clients have some built-in filtering functionality to block out things that are NSFW, crypto-related, etc. Different relays have different moderation policies, much like mastodon instances.

    You can run your own relay of course.

    • renard_roux@beehaw.org
      4·
      9 months ago

      I tried reading up on Nostr the other day, and came away finding it unpalatable, mainly because my understanding was that upvotes are tied to crypto.

      The way I read it, you need some sort of crypto currency to pay for upvoting a post, from which I inferred that the only reasonable gauge for a posts popularity (upvotes) was intrinsically tied to money (and crypto-money, at that).

      Is this a reasonable assessment, or did I misunderstand something?

      EDIT: I was wrong, and stand corrected 👍

      • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        Your understanding is not correct. You do not need to use crypto at all to use the platform. There is an optional tipping mechanism where you can tip people via BTC lightning if you like their tweets. It’s pretty fun to use, it’s fun to receive tips from others when they like your post. But you don’t have to.

        You can still post, like, re-tweet, reply, DM, etc with no crypto whatsoever. Crypto is not tied to upvotes/visibility unless you specifically set it to filter that way in your client.

        One benefit of having crypto integration built-in is that it can provide a sustainable funding mechanisms for relays. You can use “pools” when you send tips. So when you send 10c in a tip for somebody’s post, you can elect to have 1% go to the relay maintainer, nostr development, or any other destination you choose. This problem of subsidizing hosting is a problem ActivityPub doesn’t has any real solution for.

        On Activity Pub, instances may choose to run ads, issue badges, or otherwise pay for hosting, but if AP is going to scale to the level it needs to get to, we can’t rely on the altruism of instances to just host everything for free. If we do, we will end up in a centralized social media mess like we’re trying to get away from in the first place.

        There are many ways to solve this problem of needing to pay for the network infrastructure, but nostr is the only one currently that has a workable solution.

        • renard_roux@beehaw.org
          3·
          9 months ago

          Thank you for the clarification! I’ve clearly misunderstood the function of the crypto and/or read a poor description of Nostr 👌

          In this case, the crypto (in itself still an unpalatable, energy wasting pyramid scheme, IMO) makes a lot more sense, and doesn’t detract from the platform (other than facilitating the platform’s tacit promotion of crypto).

          • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            Nice to have a cordial discussion/disagreement on here. If you’re interested in reading some (IMO) good arguments for why it’s not a energy wasting pyramid scheme, check my comment history :).

    • dan@upvote.au
      2·
      9 months ago

      Your identity is not tied to your instance. If your instance closes up shop, you keep all your followers, followees, DMs, etc

      This is one of the major advantages Bluesky’s protocol (AT Protocol) has over ActivityPub. ActivityPub doesn’t have anything built-in to support this. On Bluesky, you can use your own domain name as your username, and freely move from one server to another while keeping the same username (once they open up federation). It’s configured through a DNS TXT record.

      • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Still doesn’t beat nostr imo.

        Bluesky:

        • Identity not tied to instance
        • You have to buy and administer a domain name, which is technically complex and costs $10.
        • DNS is also subject to censorship by firewalls

        Nostr:

        • Identity is not tied to an instance
        • Your private keys (identity) are generated by your app. No purchase or administration required
        • Censorship is much more difficult
      • makeasnek@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        No, but some functionality could be bolted onto it for that purpose. But it is a federated network, just within it’s own protocol. Fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, etc) run on an underlying protocol: ActivityPub, so they can all federate with each other within ActivityPub.

        Nostr runs on an underlying protocol also confusingly called nostr. Nostr’s main “interface” is a twitter clone, but the underlying protocol supports things like video streaming sites etc and some interfaces have been built for that purpose.