Thinking how cool it would be if there was such a thing as a Mastodon box or Fediverse box: a very easy to set up server that you just plug in at home, which keeps itself updated and requires minimal maintenance. Then every neighbourhood could have a Mastodon instance of a couple hundred (at most) users...
This would make it very easy to facilitate local mutual aid projects and/or buy-nothing groups, without having Facebook in the loop.
IMO the biggest obstacle to having more very small (easy to moderate) instances right now is the fact that setting up a server requires technical knowledge/budget/etc that's beyond most people outside of the tech world (and is very much a domain of white privilege). If a mastodon instance was as easy to set up as a gaming console or set-top box, the fediverse would arguably be a healthier place...
@dumpsterqueer yeah I tried to spin up the digital ocean premade droplet and still failed lol
@c24h29clo4 The closest we have atm is something like https://masto.host
@dumpsterqueer yup.
A plug in box at home would be nice but would never work out of the box or remotely easily without server infrastructure, otherwise port forwarding etc would be needed and that's a pain in the ass / not even possible on some routers
fuchsiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
@c24h29clo4 @dumpsterqueer I've been thinking of setting up (public) wireguard reversy proxies for ages now. With all the actual hosting happening at home, you could support a bunch of instances on a single node.
As for bandwidth requirements, pixie.town basically does this, on a home vdsl 50/20 line together with a matrix server (which does over-strain it at times)
@c24h29clo4 @dumpsterqueer I think under various legislations this would count as a transit provider of sorts, as you're just passing around existing traffic you have less responsibility.
the other options would be having to port forward + dynamic dns (+ exposing someone's home ip and thus (general) location), or getting everyone to federate over tor hidden services
Police
@f0x @dumpsterqueer it might be where you are, but here things like "common sense" and "math don't matter too much to the government or police (there's persistent efforts to ban encryption or force mathematically impossible backdoors into it) so I put no faith in any protection even if we have any
@f0x @dumpsterqueer I can see this imposing a lot of risks on whomever is running the proxies for the content on them.
Which is not something I'd be personally comfortable with, and not something I'd ask anyone else to do ubless their country was very different to mine lol