fired up my IRC client a few weeks ago, very quiet there but still running! what servers are worth joining these days?
also worth noting that Element is built with similar ideals to IRC but with E2EE included.
Also important to remember that IRC has some privacy issues that you may want to address before connecting as any IRC user can get your connecting IP and ISP info.
expected, but not a sustainable growth, there is a finite number of conversions here.
centralized networks popularized the idea of mods just doing these kinds of things sadly. on the old forums it was pretty common for a mod to post something as a warning, even just a simple pair of eyes.
mods will pitch it as a way to save time, not sure if making ban the “go-to” option is a great idea.
Welcome!
Here from reddit? Find your new home.
The “network” of instances that uses ActivityPub
The Reddit-like federated forum app that runs on ActivityPub within the Fediverse
Lists of Instances
Communities for getting started in the fediverse
Tools and info for admins and admins-to-be
Building or contributing?
I see people fight just to learn how to do basic things.
this was my general experience as well before the last few years, I found it fascinating that once people had it in their heads to “figure it out” how quickly they really did… I have noticed a growing trend of people working hard to make it seem like all this is harder than it is either for basal marketing reasons or for others that I can only guess at. Its hard to quantify how damaging simply posting articles on topics without date/time stamps can be and that’s such a massive part of tech docs in this day and age its breathtaking.
IMO we NEED LLMs to help cut through the bull. it REALLY is not as hard as people would have you believe, we make up words ,and sometimes because computers are dumb, we have to take more steps than you might think about normally.
apologies then.
I understand my knowledge base is kind of big here, running this is a small subset for me. However, I have worked in a number of areas in the last few years where the goal was to get “rank and file” folks to run servers of thier own. This was a scenario where normal people had a desire to run thier own servers and were willing to learn the process.
I helped multiple non technical (some only phone users) stand up ubuntu VMs and run through the process of setting up the server. The process was OVER 20 steps. That motivator was imporant of course, and I do believe there are people that are motivated like that simply to support fedi or own thier space (marginalized folks particularly).
I didn’t use any special skills to help them beyond patience, I didn’t write the docs and I often supplied links to docs or man pages as questions to answers so, given the right desire, people will do it. Owning your presence, certainly a motivator to many, and based on the desires to dump money on servers, there is clearly also a desire to help, if running a server has a 1-click, lets point them to it.
That said, paying for a managed instance is a good play IMO, the legal arrangement around running a managed system is decidedly different than that of posting on a centralized system, by default you have both more technical and legal control of that space so its a win.
its hard to fight multiple decades of VC money dumped into the idea that “its all about the domain name”
FOSS is always at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing.
Downvote rather than argue, thanks for showing your colors.
I was running forums in the 90s. I was lucky living near the space coast, and I shared my fortune with others online. Still do.
These are not expensive or hard to run, and they werent back then either. I guess to that I say…git gud scrub
hop on the lemmy admin chat on matrix and see what you get with that line, running email is not that hard, finding a clean IP can be a pain though. Thats about all these big services are gatewaying. SMTP and IMAP is not that hard to run, even easier for a small user system.
this happens all the time in email though, its not a guarantied delivery system.
it took decades for the protocol impls to smooth out.
did you really expect that bot to “follow the rules”?
its going to get banned across most of the verse.
email, usenet, fidonet, irc, phpbb, invision, bbses say hello
i ran forums of 10k users and “paying for it” was never the problem
we didnt stop hosting these because we got tired of it, we stopped because people ran off to centralized networks because so many were convinced being on the “same domain” is the best idea via marketing.
two big lies have been perpetuated on the modern internet:
nothing was wrong with the old system other than the fact that individual forums are not going to spend money to out-market valley VC’s
people either want systems that represent them, or they want to be on systems that represent others first. I don’t think they realize these are the decisions they are making, since most have no knowledge of what the internet truly is.
its automated.
I always used forums as 1st level knowledge stores, bascially where stuff lives before its promoted to a more durable and catalogable format like a wiki. doing it in public as much as you can is just the way IMO. I was starting to use reddit before they made these moves, happy to be back to doing it the old ways!
Adding your communities to my server (subbing stats syncing).
Here are a couple you might find interesting:
I would love this, running a SFW topical instance but ok to let people make it home. Have plenty of capacity and no plans to shut it down. Last system i ran lasted almost 15 years before it shut down due to utter lack of use…because reddit.
i expect this to get smoothed out, for my system its a minority of posts having the issue. I expect P2P growing pains, price of more control and freedom.
lets not expect equal levels of investment in the code bases…yet.
i don’t think people “want” them IMO, I think you have a lot of people that aren’t understanding the concept of federation. I am “that guy” trying to explain that letting instances get too big creates the same “reddit” problems again. Its better to move control over your space to something more local IMO.
there are also plans to add some scaling so I do expect there to be support for big instances.
I haven’t seen a single advantage of being on a big server (i have accounts on a lot of these systems). My small instance of less than 100 users currently loads pretty much everything I have no issues posting or getting replies, there is an odd issue here and there but you get the same big instance to big instance as well, its more in the servers impl that needs smoothing.
Small instances are fast and you get A LOT of control over your All and other pages.
Most internet users that started using the internet in the last 10 years or so think a centralized internet is a normal internet, they think domains rule the world. We need to teach them how this really works and how we don’t need to bend knee to people to communicate.
you signed up to one of the biggest instances, this is not like reddit, its a federation so it does not matter as much what server you are on, however adding load to the big servers is causing BIG issues for them.
create an account on a system with less than 10k users.
interesting lines to walk, depends on what they are selling, there is a definte cost to running a model and you are allowed to charge a reasonable fee to handle the process of providing the records. we used to pay per page for this kind of thing, now you pay per token
they can also sell a lot of services and tools around the model while still not using it in a non-infringing manner. this will all end up in front a of a judge, with the books laid out i suspect. I am not sure we will ever see any of the details, i hope we do.
the computer wrote the 2nd one on accident when someone asked it to bake a cake.