Microblogging with ActivityPub [LWN.net]

Microblogging with ActivityPub

Posted Nov 29, 2022 23:16 UTC (Tue) by ruscur (guest, #104891)
Parent article: Microblogging with ActivityPub

I wish Mastodon didn't have such a complex stack. It needs Rails, Node.js, PostgreSQL and Redis just to get off the ground. I'm hosting a small instance for my friends and it really feels like overkill, maybe I should have gone with Plemora et al. It hasn't needed much maintenance after I set it up over the past month, at least.

Performance scaling and content moderation seem to be the two hardest challenges facing server admins - everything is reasonably comfy if your server is only for you, or people you know.

Microblogging with ActivityPub

Posted Nov 29, 2022 23:45 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

If your use case is a web server for a small crowd, and you decide to switch, GoToSocial seems like the most interesting one at present.

It's the only one that seems to be trying anything new w.r.t. robust moderation; Mastodon's system is reviled for its uselessness by most of the site owners I've talked to who've had to use it, and Pleroma's was written by someone who had to leave the project years ago and has had zero upkeep since. Both of the big two fail Postel's Law badly - there is no way to express “do not transact with this remote instance in any way” unless you become a domain expert at nftables and DNS RPZ chicanery, which isn't a burden I'd wish upon my worst enemy.

There's plenty other faults but the lack of access control has been an elephant in the room, so to speak, for going on half a decade.