gbhnews
? Hello #fediverse! I'm going into a meeting at 4ET to talk about our newsroom's social media options.
If you think our station and other #NPR stations should have a Mastodon server and a broader presence in the #fediverse, pls boost this post. If you have thoughts, please reply, I want to hear them!
Futurist Jim Carroll
@gatewayy @gbhnews @ai6yr Not complicated at all.
There's a big community of folks out here who #selfhost #Selfhosting who would be eager to guide them.
When I joined in November, I ran a pool to see how long it would take for news media to arrive. We were wildly optimistic.
Pretty sure they would be looking at it at this point.
https://jimcarroll.substack.com/p/creating-my-own-mastodon-instance
Brett Elliff
@gbhnews It is not very difficult for #NPR to run it's own instance on their domain. Something like mastodon.npr.org and then have stations, reporters, etc. create accounts. Then #NPR 100% controls their own platform and are not at the whims of tech moguls and the like. :)
Futurist Jim Carroll
@gatewayy @gbhnews @ai6yr LOL. I didn't realize you were one too. Nice.
My big struggle was to try to do jim@mastodon.jimcarroll.com - too much of a fight with nginx - so I just stuck it on a nice domain name that I had kicking around which fits the brand.
The post tells my story. Unbuntu 22.04, 2mb, 40gb, all offloaded to S3/Cloudfront. Maintenance is marginal. I have a nice cleaning script if you want it.
Brett Elliff
@jimcarroll
Nice to meet another self hoster!
Futurist Jim Carroll
@gatewayy @gbhnews @ai6yr I run this once a week, it does a nice job of pruning. It's based on something I saw somewhere but can't find him to give jim credit.
#!/bin/bash
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl media usage
# Prune remote accounts that never interacted with a local user
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl accounts prune;
# Remove remote statuses that local users never interacted with older than 4 days
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl statuses remove --days 30;
# Remove media attachments older than 4 days
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl media remove --days 15;
# Remove all headers (including people I follow)
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl media remove --remove-headers --include-follows --days 15;
# Remove link previews older than 4 days
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl preview_cards remove --days 15;
# Remove files not link to any post
RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/live/bin/tootctl media remove-orphans;
Brett Elliff
@jimcarroll
I'm using the one from the git repo but I’m always looking for ways to improve things.
Futurist Jim Carroll
@ai6yr @gatewayy @gbhnews First line will tell you storage used by type. After running it, check the numbers again. Stick it in a cron and you might not need to expand.
AI6YR Ben
@jimcarroll @gatewayy @gbhnews Went into my server to check things out, that was timely... typed "df" and realized I needed to expand the volume!! (pruning stuff probably will help, too).
AI6YR Ben
@jimcarroll @gatewayy @gbhnews removing orphans now... oh boy. But it's the local storage, not media, which is the problem... now up to a whopping 64GB of storage on this machine LOL (that amount of storage is fairly cheap, AWS).
Futurist Jim Carroll
@ai6yr @gatewayy @gbhnews I'm hovering around 80GB-100GB of AWS storage. I'm cool with that. Pretty cheap.
benjamin melançon
@gbhnews @jsit also setting up your own instance of Mastodon or other software on the fediverse is pretty easy. For one client @agaric is doing this two ways: One where "News Org dot Social" engages like you are now (and also, not so needed, invites the public) and another where the news org at its main domain publishes full articles directly. This could be done on the same domain with some technical differences, or easily on a main domain and a subdomain (social.wgbh.org or social.npr.org).
gbhnews
@jsit ooh good point thank you
Jay 🗳️
@gbhnews Good luck! Maybe hashtag #NPR here so more people might see it, since it’s on a lot of people’s minds today?
Maria Varmazis :verified_neko:
@gbhnews YES. NPR should run its own instance and have its stations and journalists on there. It would be amazing to have one place to follow everybody NPR-affiliated.
gbhnews
I think it's worth understanding what the barriers are to stations or networks establishing their own servers.
As the social editor, if I see a new platform and think, "oh, that's interesting," I have the power to open an account there.
Setting up a server for a station or a network would involve the cooperation of IT, marketing, and legal folks. Big stations and big networks have to do a fair amount of prep and due diligence before they make a move like that. 1/x
gbhnews
NOTE: as I mentioned to @FediFollows and @hermitary earlier today, it's important to understand the barriers that face stations or networks that want to set up a server. I summarize those here: https://mastodon.social/@gbhnews/110186548799130656
No one should expect anything to happen instantly.
gbhnews
Not totally sure why my link is not working but here's the commentary I shared before:
Jonathan Sadow
@gbhnews @mem_somerville Maybe NPR (or NPR & PRI) could set up a server that is open to all affiliated stations so that WGBH doesn't have to bear the burden for all of it.
gbhnews
@mem_somerville Yes. It's just that some people seem to think that the only cost is the cost to set up a server. for a station or a network a lot more goes into it.
gbhnews
So it's not just the cost of setting up/running a server (which people tell me here could be quite minimal). It's the man-hours of prep, setup, and ongoing maintenance for things like moderation, tech support, etc. that come into the equation.
And the other half of that equation is the assessment the people involved make of the opportunity. Math is a big part of that. How many users are on that network, and how many of those people are likely to see or engage? 2/2
mem_somerville
@gbhnews Yeah, we understand this. But still: you have full control--not at the whims of a psycho with more money than sense, or a government, or whatever.
Also: you get the added cred of verifying your own team. It's hard to know here who is legit, imposters are easy to create in this system--an institution server is a good solution to this.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.