We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.

If you’re interested in participating in this experiment, please let us know by filling out this form.

(sorry it’s in Google docs)

https://forms.gle/7uRui5VnMPfEYAgq8

5/6

@admin @Mastodon hey! The only thing to do for now is make sure you’re meeting these eligibility requirements:

- Run default Mastodon (for now)
- Agree to the Server Covenant
- Have existed for 1+ year
- Have shut-down & disaster plans

Besides that, stay tuned!

@andrewblasco @Mastodon

It's a double edged sword. Yes, mastodon.social is large and unweildy, but as the default it kept me from ignorantly joining a toxic instance like beigeparty. I'm for change, but it's yet to be seen how this plays out in practice.

A better solution might be something like an official introductory instance where you get 6 months to get your footing and then it prompts you to migrate and gives you a selection of vetted servers. Like pushing a baby bird out of the nest.

@haubles @admin @Mastodon

This is awesome! I would be happy to host more folks on my server. I just need some guidance on how to reduce the cost a bit. I am not sure how to get images, videos, etc, to less expensive storage on Digital Ocean. Anyone out there that could point me in the right direction?

Starting now, we’re recruiting general purpose servers with open sign-ups. To be eligible, servers must:

- Run default Mastodon (for now)
- Agree to the Server Covenant
- Have existed for 1+ year
- Have shut-down & disaster plans

4/6

@Mastodon can we have something like a quota? Not to overflow a small instance?

@Mastodon I presume by "default Mastodon", you mean that if a server has so much as changed the max characters per post from the default 500, they won't be eligible?

Otherwise, I think this is a fantastic idea!

We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.

Our intent for this experiment is to recommend the closest server geographically that is in the correct language during the sign-up flow. We will be running this experiment on our iOS and Android apps only to start.

1/6

@beachbum1972
You could try with a tool like s3fs to mount an S3 bucket locally, then copy or move files over before pointing Mastodon directly to the S3 bucket.

@OctaviaConAmore @Mastodon

For this experiment, that is correct. We are looking to partner with servers that have open sign-ups. But we've heard the feedback that spam is going to be a big issue for many servers to participate, so our team is going to discuss what we can do about that next week.

We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.

Our intent for this experiment is to recommend the closest server geographically that is in the correct language during the sign-up flow. We will be running this experiment on our iOS and Android apps only to start.

1/6

@haubles @OctaviaConAmore @Mastodon

Thanks for clarifying.

As it stands any participating server would be paying a price for inclusion.

I'm not even sure how many reputable general purpose servers still have open sign-up after recent spam waves.

As a volunteer, eyeballing potential member applications while not attending to one's own business is the only way to do it.

@meadmin Qlub comme serveur recommandé?

We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.

Our intent for this experiment is to recommend the closest server geographically that is in the correct language during the sign-up flow. We will be running this experiment on our iOS and Android apps only to start.

1/6

@haubles @admin @Mastodon

This is awesome! I would be happy to host more folks on my server. I just need some guidance on how to reduce the cost a bit. I am not sure how to get images, videos, etc, to less expensive storage on Digital Ocean. Anyone out there that could point me in the right direction?

@beachbum1972 If you're starting with media on your local system, you can configure your proxy server (nginx or equivalent) to try serving media from DO first and then falling back to the local filesystem. Then configure mastodon to use S3 (all new media will now be in DO). At this point you have all the time you need to migrate the files over from the local filesystem to DO. This is effectively what Hachyderm did when migrating media from local filesystem to a storage bucket.

@beachbum1972 Found the blog post about it. There's not a lot of detail there but the tl;dr is to use the nginx try_files directive to check the storage bucket first before the local filesystem.
https://community.hachyderm.io/blog/2022/12/03/leaving-the-basement/#solution-nginx-try_files

We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.

Our intent for this experiment is to recommend the closest server geographically that is in the correct language during the sign-up flow. We will be running this experiment on our iOS and Android apps only to start.

1/6