What many people misunderstand about hosting your own content (like this social media instance) is thinking we somehow NEED a big audience or Big Tech involvement.

I'm perfectly fine if the world faded away and it was just the thousand of us here. It's like the early days of the web when we had small forums, nobody missed Reddit back then. Federation is a big plus, not a requirement.

It's the same with websites or IRC for me. I know people use Discord, but I still stick to IRC even if there are only about a hundred of us left. I know people use AI now and website visitors are dropping, but who cares? I still keep doing it for those who like to read.

I don't need the whole world involved for this to feel worthwhile. It's mine, I own it, and I host it for as long as I breathe. After that, it won't matter to me anymore, but I hope other admins keep things running the way I did.

#SelfHosted #SelfHosting #OpenSource #Fediverse #Mastodon #OpenWeb #SocialWeb

What many people misunderstand about hosting your own content (like this social media instance) is thinking we somehow NEED a big audience or Big Tech involvement.

I'm perfectly fine if the world faded away and it was just the thousand of us here. It's like the early days of the web when we had small forums, nobody missed Reddit back then. Federation is a big plus, not a requirement.

It's the same with websites or IRC for me. I know people use Discord, but I still stick to IRC even if there are only about a hundred of us left. I know people use AI now and website visitors are dropping, but who cares? I still keep doing it for those who like to read.

I don't need the whole world involved for this to feel worthwhile. It's mine, I own it, and I host it for as long as I breathe. After that, it won't matter to me anymore, but I hope other admins keep things running the way I did.

#SelfHosted #SelfHosting #OpenSource #Fediverse #Mastodon #OpenWeb #SocialWeb

I know this plant might be in a small amount over there, some may have tested it some may have heard of it the first time and some might not even want to know but this is a jackfruit plant very sweet and tasty it's plenty over here and cheap it's single from the school garden #gardening #mastodon #solarpunksunday #fediverse #linux #solarpunk #growyourown #gardening @gardening #gardeningtips

I know this plant might be in a small amount over there, some may have tested it some may have heard of it the first time and some might not even want to know but this is a jackfruit plant very sweet and tasty it's plenty over here and cheap it's single from the school garden #gardening #mastodon #solarpunksunday #fediverse #linux #solarpunk #growyourown #gardening @gardening #gardeningtips

Having said that, and also disliking the fact that it came out of corpo billionaire creators of twitter, I genuinely believe there's some good stuff to pick up from that protocol.

In particular, I think the coolest part of the architecture is server-independent (more like server-migratable) identity, which is kind of amazing.

Activitypub/fediverse should adopt https://helge.codeberg.page/fep/fep/ef61/ soon, and I feel like that'd be even better than what atproto has if I understand correctly.

#activitypub #fediverse #atproto #bluesky #mastodon #federated #protocols

https://overreacted.io/there-are-no-instances-in-atproto/

While having an extremely snobbish and arrogant tone, I think it makes some good points about separating hosting from viewing, which I think the usual #fediverse sort of conflates. And while the doesn't doesn't cover it, #atproto also has the unique feature of your data being relatively portable, largely absent in #fediverse.

#fediverse #atproto #bluesky #mastodon #lemmy #activitypub

So I usually hate sending over bluesky links anywhere since I'm not a fan, but Rob Ricci highlights some important distinctions between #activitypub and #atproto

Fundamentally, activitypub is designed to be useful with a partial view of the network. (Narrowing down to #mastodon here) Likes are communicated, mentions are communicated, and so on.

Over at atproto land, you have no option but to write to your repo, and so you have no choice but to view the entire network to say, find replies and such (narrowing to #bluesky here). So the only way you can get your data is to read the network and filter it yourself, or have someone else do it for you, which doesn't solve the problem, only shift it.

https://bsky.app/profile/ricci.io/post/3mooua5znk225

#bluesky #bsky #atproto #mastodon #fediverse #activitypub

The concentration of power in Silicon Valley happened partly because we let it. We accepted a few platforms as inevitable. We built our communities there because that’s where everyone was. It wasn’t because their technology is better. It was a choice—made again and again by the people on those platforms, by investors, and by policymakers.

A different choice is possible, but it requires that those of us building alternatives actually believe what we say about cooperation. It means assuming good faith from people building different projects. It means investing in infrastructure that doesn’t benefit us alone.

We, the builders of the open social web, are the only ones who can make that choice.

It starts with deciding that our mission matters more than winning alone.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/06/why-the-social-web-must-work-together/

#SocialWeb #Fediverse #Mastodon

The concentration of power in Silicon Valley happened partly because we let it. We accepted a few platforms as inevitable. We built our communities there because that’s where everyone was. It wasn’t because their technology is better. It was a choice—made again and again by the people on those platforms, by investors, and by policymakers.

A different choice is possible, but it requires that those of us building alternatives actually believe what we say about cooperation. It means assuming good faith from people building different projects. It means investing in infrastructure that doesn’t benefit us alone.

We, the builders of the open social web, are the only ones who can make that choice.

It starts with deciding that our mission matters more than winning alone.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/06/why-the-social-web-must-work-together/

#SocialWeb #Fediverse #Mastodon