@NonPlayableClown@TheLocoBandito@bot graf has extended poast way too much. most nodes just has 1 server. Graf has CDNs across the globe and even a peertube. maybe they thought poast would really take off and wanted everything ready for when the efame hit.
Speaking of which, feel free to setup a server with btrfly, which won't have any risk of going into bankruptcy or leaking your information because you went against the owner's intrest. :SeethingDanielS:
@bot@NonPlayableClown@TheLocoBandito it goes a little somethin like this: >"E-CELEBS could be here" [graf] thought, "I've never watched this stream before. There could be E-CELEBS anywhere." The screen's glow illuminated his jaundiced skin. "I LOVE E-CELEBS" [graf] thought. Caesura of Despair reverberated his entire desk, making it pulsate even as the second handle of Yukon Jack circulated through his Canadian veins and bolstered his (compulsive) love of e-celebs online. "With a Pleroma instance, you can court any e-celeb you want" he said to himself, out loud.
I think it’s more like he had a fantasy of how big and popular poast would be and built things out to that extent, and then kept making bad decisions to chase revenue, some of which caused ppl and some ecelebs to leave. He seems to be making bad decisions again too.
I'm sure it was a gradual thing. You get some donations and expand. I don't fault graf for trying to build something. Maybe trying to sell more subscription stuff earlier on would have helped, but the Internet has been in the "free" "gibs" means of operation since before the '01 dotcom bust.
Sites come and go. It is a pretty impressive instance deployment, I'll give it that. I know the NoAgenda guy funds his entire infrastructure himself and doesn't take donations (par the court for people who listen to the podcast and believe in the 'value for value' model).
I've quit my job to work on projects while travelling twice before. I lived out of hostels and visited friends for 11 months. I always ended up back in the workforce though. I got some adventures out of it. Graf seems to have gotten further than I have ... takes a lot of effort, and you gotta be a type-A hardass to make anything really take off in this world. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.
Graf runs that business but unsurprisingly ppl don’t want to pay for something they can get for free. The whole “tons of tiny instances” is basically what nostr is btw.
I don’t see the big model working. The whole point is (and should be) lots of small instances.
Teaching people how to do this is a good idea. Charging to manage it for them is a business. There are a couple of guys who are starting this idea up, but I doubt they want host poast users as they are very much on the other side of the great wall of Mastodon. We could use a service on the anti-censorship side of the Fediverse.
But even if you don’t have the tech skills to host out of your house, you should be able to run an instance using a VSP + Cloudiron for around $10 USD/month + a domain. If you have decent tech skills you could run one out if your house for even cheaper.
The future of federated stuff is lots of tiny instances. It really is easier than most people think. If anyone out there is interested in learning how, hit me up if you want tips on how to do it.
The problem is that you can’t offer unlimited free then be shocked when no one pays.
Nostr is interesting. Keeping my eye on it, especially as a Rebased/Soapbox admin, seeing what Alex is doing with integrating the two could be game changing.
Would be easier for newbs to setup instances yes, but ultimately it would be better for fedi admins to set it up themselves and retain as much control as possible over their server
In fairness to graf, I'm assuming he just phrased it awkwardly and he means his goal was to operate it in a way that wasn't at a major loss that cuts into his savings.