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Sat, 19 Nov 2022 18:57:43 +0100

evan@prodromou.pub

If we can fit about 10-100K people on a Mastodon server,

and we've got 38M Canadians,

then we're going to need 400 to 4000 Canadian servers.

Let's start building them.

#cosocialca

http://cosocial.ca/

mehr anzeigen 41 comments

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 18:59:22 +0100

Dan Fox

DanFox@mstdn.ca

@evan Why is there a limit to the number of people on a server? Could an instance not just scale up with hardware as it grows?

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:02:29 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@DanFox have they? The max I've seen is 100K. Let me know if you find higher numbers.

There's also social and financial scaling. Can the community scale bigger than that? Can the financial burden be covered?

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:04:32 +0100

Steve

https://mastodon.tech/users/steve

@evan @DanFox mastodon.social is reporting 234K "active" users.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:17:20 +0100

Wonky

wonky@autonomy.ninja

@evan Might be getting a tiny bid ahead of ourselves. :)

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:30:53 +0100

Rory

rory@infosec.exchange

@evan 😂 we probably don't need to assume that we'll get the whole country. Wouldn't that be cool, though. I'm guessing we're going to find a practical break-over point at about 20 - 50k users where it's cheaper and more stable to start another server.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:31:58 +0100

neville park

nev@flipping.rocks

@evan TBH I think the upper bound for a Mastodon server should not be "how many people can the server handle" but "how many people can the admins and mods handle". And if that's only 1000, 100, or 5, that's fine.

I've seen a lot of servers with growing pains, and it's not a technical issue, it's social—taking on users en masse without the resources to vet, moderate, and support them.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:38:59 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@steve @DanFox cool. Probably among the biggest? Could we say order of magnitude between 4 and 6?

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:39:19 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@wonky to early to start?

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:40:05 +0100

Wonky

wonky@autonomy.ninja

@evan

😜 You can always scale later.

#horizontalscaling

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:42:00 +0100

Dan Fox

DanFox@mstdn.ca

@evan @steve I have no idea. I'm not knowledgable enough to say what the right size might be for an instance.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:57:37 +0100

Darnell Clayton :verified:

darnell@one.darnell.one

@evan You should probably also contact/checkout Direct Hosting (https://directhosting.ca) who also hosts Mastodon instances in Canada 🇨🇦.

https://directhosting.ca/canadian-mastodon-hosting

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:59:15 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@darnell Cool! Will do.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 20:00:20 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@wonky OK, thanks for the tip, but I think we're going to still work on getting new servers. We're not setting up 4000 servers tomorrow, don't worry.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 20:13:28 +0100

Eric G.

https://masto.ai/@exg

@evan A bit of a tangent: I'm curious if folks are mostly running on in-house hardware or on cloud services? I'm considering a small instance and am feeling rather ambivalent.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 20:14:17 +0100

mathew

mathew@campaign.openworlds.info

@evan @maparent

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 20:21:34 +0100

BrianLinuxing 🇮🇪✅

BrianLinuxing@fosstodon.org

@evan

Go team #Canada!

I suspect that the issue with larger instances is contention.

The more people, the more internal traffic and chatter there would be, but best check that with those who are doing big mastodon instances

My advice (and I've done some rather large IT projects over the decades):

1. Start small with a prototype.
2. Document everything, ask advice everywhere, work out the pinch points.
3. Test breakages (remove key bits) and see the overall effect.
...

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 21:18:31 +0100

tdell

https://fosstodon.org/@tdell

@evan Is there an advantage to keeping the Canadian userbase separate from the rest of the English-speaking world?

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 22:51:36 +0100

Johann Sebastian Staedtler 🇨🇦

jsstaedtler@mastodon.art

@nev @evan YES. There's a "social" part of "social media." It's easier to manage a single smaller instance, plus it is less likely to be reduced to the lowest common denominator of its members. And with Mastodon, anyone else can freely (and rightfully) block your whole instance if it harbours any number of bad actors.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 22:54:10 +0100

neville park

nev@flipping.rocks

@jsstaedtler @evan As always, my playbook is @darius's https://runyourown.social.

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 23:47:04 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@tdell the main one is that membership in a Canadian co-operative is simpler if you're a resident Canadian.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 00:04:26 +0100

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

chris@im.allmendenetz.de

@Evan Prodromou why you are using https://docs.google.com/forms ?? O boy, and we thought is is all about sovereignty

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 02:17:00 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@nev @jsstaedtler @darius thanks. I actually have some experience setting up and running social sites, but I love reading Darius's words. And it's great to revisit with fresh eyes.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 08:38:42 +0100

Mike Fraser :Jets:

mike@thecanadian.social

@evan We've already started https://thecanadian.social

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 09:01:42 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Sun, 20 Nov 2022 20:52:29 +0100

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

chris@im.allmendenetz.de

@Johann Sebastian Staedtler 🇨🇦 Evan has quid a bit different ideas to set up communities than @Darius Kazemi

"If we can fit about 10-100K people on a Mastodon server,"

that seams to me a NO GO - just to much

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:29:44 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@chris it's a napkin estimate for setting lower bounds on the number of sites in Canada.

If typical sites are 100 or 1000 people, that means we'll need 40K to 400K sites for all Canadians.

It's a lot!

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:31:07 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@chris do you have a quick Free and Open Source form builder you'd recommend?

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:40:06 +0100

⏣ (nut)

xarvos@outerheaven.club

@evan @chris not used it myself, but i think nextcloud should have similar app

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 16:04:33 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@mike good, thank you!

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 16:17:21 +0100

John Francis

johnefrancis@mastodon.social

@evan name has a bit of a CounterSocial vibe but I'll get over it.

Congratulations and really interested to see how it goes wrt the structure of the owning entity and how that's bound to the interest of the users/owners/subscribers

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 16:22:25 +0100

samrose

https://mathstodon.xyz/@samrose

@evan you were doing it before doing it was cool (again)

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 16:51:01 +0100

leftic

https://gs.leftic.club/@leftic

@evan
You can use subdomain.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 20:52:05 +0100

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

chris@im.allmendenetz.de

@χάρβος @Evan Prodromou

Yea - you can do forms easy with NC, also there are some WP addons for that
and there are others:

https://listmonk.app/

https://blog.containerize.com/2020/10/08/top-5-open-source-online-form-builders-in-year-2020/

https://budibase.com/blog/open-source-form-builder/

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 21:02:55 +0100

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

chris@im.allmendenetz.de

@Evan Prodromou

"10-100K people on a Mastodon server"

the vision of the Fediverse is something different i thought -

It is more about this here: https://freedombox.org

Your businesses plans could also go more in this direction - Find ways so that every home has such kind of a box and that it can be operated easy

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 21:30:39 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@chris maybe *your* business plans should go in that direction!

I'm not doing business plans. I've got a full time job already.

I'm just trying to set up co-op hosting so we can handle the #TwitterMigration as it comes in.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 21:36:47 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@chris also, I don't need a lecture on the vision of the fediverse.

I think we're probably done with this conversation.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 21:44:10 +0100

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

chris@im.allmendenetz.de

@Evan Prodromou
OK - co-op hosting for 10-100K people on a Mastodon server ?

we want to have many small server which are not run and controlled by few

"so, I don't need a lecture on the vision of the fediverse"

sorry for sure not - I'm just surprised when you talk about such big servers.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 21:46:28 +0100

Sebastian Lasse

sl007@digitalcourage.social

@jsstaedtler @nev @evan

Yep. 100.000 is already hard.

Trying to describe a governance structure similar to the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

For governance assumptions or the user/moderation ratio we assume governance figures from Hamburg, Germany where from the whole population

0,018% Bezirksversammlung [Direct municipal district assembly]
0,007% Bürgerschaft [City assembly acting as German Federal Land]
0,003% other/higher interest
=
0,028%
The ratios from Mehrmandatswahlkreise is applied as well based on instance size.

We want to make sure that 2 elected administrations exist,

instance assembly: for governance per instance (main moderators)
fediverse plenum: for important decisions amongst instances

[…][[not enough space]]

= when an instance has 40.000 ‘citizens’
it would need at least
7 main moderators
3 for ‘fedi plenum’
3.5 admins

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 13:31:14 +0100

Paul Fuxjaeger

cypherhippie@chaos.social

@evan nice 👍

question:
„local servers per city or neighbourhood, but membership is national“
Do you already know how this can be pulled off? I’m kinda working on the same problem…

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 15:35:56 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@cypherhippie I don't understand what you mean. Socially? Legally? Technically?

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 15:40:56 +0100

Paul Fuxjaeger

cypherhippie@chaos.social

@evan technically. My assumption was:
National membership is required to join local instance
If so, it sounds to me like there needs to be a nationwide auth server?

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 16:25:08 +0100

Evan Prodromou

evan@prodromou.pub

@cypherhippie sure, eventually. I think our plan is to have admin-authorized registration and have the mods check a database before approving the signup