this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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Fediverse

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I am looking to host a fediverse platform for a community of non-tech people. These people use mostly ig and some still fb. These people are from a network of schools which are ideologically aligned with libre software and decentralisation. It will include adults and also teenagers, who mostly use IG. This is part of a plan of a massive migration to ethical platforms. I am trying to choose the fittest fediverse solution to these, also considering that I am not sure how much my home server will be capable of sustaining, so the platform should ideally be as lightweight as possible. I am considering mastodon, pixelfed, misskey and sharkey, and some people have suggested akkoma.

What would you recommend? Thanks!!

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think once groups land in Pixelfed and the new app is released on the official app-stores, which will hopefully both happen this month, it is probably the best option if people are used to IG and Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh I didn't know there was a new app coming out, is the original one being rebuilt?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

According to the main developer's mastodon feed, yes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if pixelfed is resource hungry? As mastodon?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's written in php Laravel, so it should be somewhat more lightweight than Mastodon, but not massively so.

Mastodon also has a bit of an unjustified bad reputation for that... yes for very small instances it is a resource hog, but it scales reasonably well to larger number of users after that initial bump.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Semi-related but I was thinking about this earlier this year, and I was wondering about the feasibility of posting bus cancellations via the fediverse instead of via a bussing company’s website or email.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think updates like that would do well on Mastodon, it's the most popular right now so it has a wider reach / support. Similar to what would have been posted to Twitter before

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It definitely seems like a good idea for education services, weather services, local municipal services, and basically all important government institutions to make important announcements and updates via a service they can host themselves or is more distributed, like Mastadon, instead of via Twitter where they have to obey the whims of people like Musk.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Is friendica appealing for teenagers? does the UX feel modern/polished? (this is non relevant for me, but sadly for teens it is so important)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wait you know teenagers who use Facebook ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You wrote in your post the people you wanted to introduce it to is using Instagram and Facebook and now you said here those people are teenagers .

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

some adults still use fb. I doubt there are students that use fb. they mostly use ig.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's because you mentioned Facebook, I thought Friendica would be a good like for like.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ah ok I see... Yes, some adults still use fb but most people use IG...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It depends. what purpose should this platform serve? What functions/features are you looking for? If all you're looking for is a light(er)-weight microblog fedi platform, maybe gotosocial.

Perhaps a schools network may benefit from an ActivityPub platform that not only allows social posting, but also includes features like cloud storage, and integrated groups (public, private, moderated) among other relevant features. I suggest taking a peek at streams.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Will check out streams. Is it lightweight? I wonder if gotosocial is a good choice for a multiple account instance, as AFAIK it is meant for single user ones

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I previously ran a small streams instance on an older 32-bit laptop at home for a couple people. It ran fine. It can also run on shared web-hosting platforms. So I'd certainly say it's lightweight. Though, of course, it all depends on how much usage it will get (number of people, how active they are, how many contacts on other instances, etc). It can use either MySQL or PostgreSQL for db.

As for GoToSocial, you're right, looks like it's intended for no more than a small number of people.

So how many folks are you intending on hosting at this instance?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I have no idea how many people will end up using it. If we get lucky, we probably could even get to a number of 500 or so in some years... Hopefully...