It looks like I’m moving to Mastodon
Regarding Mastodon, I really like the idea behind it but always hit a wall when thinking about starting an instance.<p>The alternatives appear to be<p>* paying around $9&#x2F;month for a managed instance<p>* hosting it yourself (with all the costs and responsibilities that come with yet another self-hosted service)<p>* signing up at a public instance (and potentially lose everything connected to it once an operator loses interest)<p>None of them sound particularly inviting. I don’t see either me or <i>anyone</i> I know paying at the rate stated for this kind of social media access. I don’t see me hosting an instance for an extended time and offering it to friends, much less the public. Should I lose interest or lack the resources to look after it, all of it disappears in an instant. Same when you stop paying for a hosted service.<p>From an outsider point of view – and likely I’m missing something major here – Mastodon appears to be a typical solution for technically-inclined people and adjacent subgroups, libertarians and communities that would be immediately blocked everywhere else (and possibly are on several Mastodon instances).<p>For a technological solution to work, it needs to solve the issues people have in a useful way. Since I cannot seem to grasp what issue Mastodon solves in a useful way, I’d be grateful for any enlightenment that’s not centered around the tech.