this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Is it useful to create your own Mastodon instance? (friendica.ginestes.es)
submitted 2 days ago by abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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The following was asked on a #Mastodon forum on #Reddit - I replied and a sort of converation started. I felt that it wa better to have the discussion where others with valuable inside could chip in so I have- with the OP's permission posted the following:

For years I have the same question:

Is it useful to create your own Mastodon instance or any other fediverse instance?

Many admins say it is a lot of work and they put a lot of effort, money and energy in it. Some even close their instance after few years, because it is just too much.

After the new political development in the USA, the fediverse got a new wave of interested people from all over the world, but the question stays.

In my opinion it makes only sense if you already have a community, like, if you're an influencer or part of an NGO or similar projects with several people, who will support you creating and maintaining it with money and own time.

What do you think and do you own an instance or work on one?

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[–] EarMaster@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you don't plan on supporting this for at least a few years I would say no.

If you don't expect to have a decent local userbase I would say no (local in the sense of a common interest, e.g. it might be useful to host an instance for all members of even a small company if you expect a decent amount of posts).

If it's just you and your family (let's be honest: it's just you) I would say no.

The fediverse can federate, but if everyone is using their own server it's just a fancy peer to peer network.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 1 day ago

@EarMaster I'm going to say that if you are doing it for wider family that might still be worth it (given that you can get a private stream and your network feed might be more relevant for other family members - But then it is a case of bringing your family along with you.. If you are doing other stuff for them (email, file sharing , device management - Then maybe an ActivityPub server becomes a bit of an addon

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago

IMO no.

Small instances can have issues with federation and now showing all replies/content.

There's also the aspect that you'll need to moderate content stored on your server, if someone posts something illegal and your server caches it, you're responsible for cleaning it up.

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Useful? No. Profitable? No. Fun? For some people. That's why they do it.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 2 days ago

Just remember that you will be required to remove any illegal content that people post. I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

To which I replied:

To which I replied :

Have a look at lemmy.world/c/selfhosted - If you have a group of family or friends I think its a good way to get them on board and curate an instance that is useful for them.

Doesnt need to be #Mastodon - could be #Friendica or #Gotosocial

Lots of ways to simplify the process - I use #Yunohost gives me Email, Nextcloud and ActivityPub for friends and family

Ideally Id eventually like to see something like this packaged into a router like #openwrtone One

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

And they added:

> Have a look at lemmy.world/c/selfhosted - If you have a group of family >or friends I think its a good way to get them on board and curate an instance
> that is useful for them.

interesting use case, but is it possible to separate friends and family members on the instance somehow? Because it sounds really good to protect all people who are close to you, but they don't have to know what the "other chatroom" is about.

And the link gave me flashbacks, because I tried to create my own lemmy instance. I worked every day for a month on it to throw it away in the end. It had so many bugs and a few seconds after my instance was online, I had weird conversations in my database, which couldn't be seen in the UI. And talking about the issues with the creator of lemmy was a little bit a pain, too.

After this, I've started a classical forum (flarum), because it looked like the fediverse is doing weird things, like polluting the database with garbage.

> Doesnt need to be Mastodon - could be Friendica or Gotosocial

I don't get the concept of gotosocial? It's like having a Mastodon instance with yourself. How do people find you?

I guess it's not made for creators, but for nerdy consumers, right?

> Lots of ways to simplify the process - I use Yunohost gives me Email, >Nextcloud and ActivityPub for friends and family

That's for sure, but there is still the problem that it must be maintained and if you already have a community, it would be really easy, but without a community or even people who know what this is, you have to do it all by your own. This could be stressful and depressing (imho).

> Ideally Id eventually like to see something like this packaged into a router like > OpenWrt One

gotosocial looks like it could work, but not for the whole family :D

[–] mbirth@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you spin up a Lemmy instance and subscribe to a community, all new posts and comments inside that community will be mirrored to your instance. As I'm subscribed to around 100 different communities, that was a LOT of traffic without me doing anything. That's why I've given up on self-hosting Lemmy just for myself and went back to using lemmy.ml.

However, I do self-host a GoToSocial server just for myself. It's probably not necessary as mastodon.social isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but if you're on a smaller instance, it might be worth it. Also, you get to show off your own domain name. And, while other instances may block yours, your content stays online as long as YOU want it to. There's no way for an external moderator to delete posts on your own server.

People can find you via Boosts from others or by searching for your @username@domain.com.

Maintaining my GoToSocial so far consisted of simply getting WatchTower to update the Docker container. Migration of data to a new version happens automatically. (Well, there was one accident where some pre-release version got released under the latest tag and I had to use the development branch for a few days .... but that was an accident from the GtS-team and shouldn't happen again.)

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

all new posts and comments inside that community will be mirrored to your instance

And that's my biggest issue w/ Lemmy. It seems to scale okay, provided you have enough users to make all that traffic worthwhile. However, I'm unlikely to actually self-host since I really don't want a copy of literally everything I sub to. Ideally, I could host my own authentication server and only the communities I host (which would probably be 0), and I'd just fetch whatever I needed from wherever it's hosted.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Now I can't help them when it comes to #gotosocial - So perhaps others can chip in.

My thoughts were that with separate subdomains (or domains ) in Yunohost you can separate out instances for Family/Friends and the group they belong to but

I'm also aware that some #ActivityPub servers can run multiple separte instances for different groups while optimising federation - I think #takake did that - but again I don't know much about that approach -

When it comes to the questiona bout being maintained. THat is a question a group I belong to has been considering since they worry about having to maintain infrastructure for a Sports Club and don't want to get bogged down in keeping the lights on - Here I guess I think using templates where possible (which I think Yunohost is kind of ) and professional support for #Opensource solutions might come in handy . (people like #autonomic I guess - or just having enough people in your group to provide the support..

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 days ago

GoToSocial is just another Fediverse software that works with multiple users like any other. The difference is really only that it is tuned more towards smaller instances and as a result is easier to set up and maintain. It also assumes most people will be using a mobile app with it anyways and thus the built in webclient is very bare bones. It does work fine with external webclients like Phanpy though.

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 2 points 2 days ago

After this, I've started a classical forum (flarum)

NodeBB recently added fediverse support

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Many admins say it is a lot of work and they put a lot of effort, money and energy in it. Some even close their instance after few years, because it is just too much.

I would say you should limit the number of active accounts. Probably to a few hundred at most in the beginning. Close registration when things start to become too much. Re-evaluate periodically and re-open as necessary/desired. There's no reason you have to allow thousands of people on your instance.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 2 days ago

@Ulrich Ia really think the idea of having a 'common bond' is a good idea to stick to. Whether thats 'my family ' or ' members of my sailing club' or ' people i went to school with' Anything beyond that you want some legal structures between you and the users to provide a level of protection

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Mastodon for personal use: not so much as replies don't federate with main tweet.
Mastodon for small group: Maybe.
Lemmy: If you want to host a CDN-like node then yes, but not everyone likes forum style discussion.
I didn't use Frendrica Sharkey or Pixelfed enough to form my own opinion.

[–] drspod@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Mastodon for personal use: not so much as replies don’t federate with main tweet.

Didn’t this get fixed very recently? I think it can fetch all replies at the time of loading the thread now.

[–] fishynoob@infosec.pub 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The reason to host your own instances is altruism. You help out the community with decentralisation and also absorb some of the bandwidth and storage costs from other instances. This is necessary for the Fediverse to survive.

[–] Smash@lemmy.self-hosted.site 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But another instance also increases the required bandwidth and data usage for all other federated instances

[–] fishynoob@infosec.pub 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes but if your instance holds a decent population then it's a net benefit

[–] pescetarian@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago

😲