Very interesting article! I have immense respect for jerry@infosec.exchange, he was one of the first people I found on the fediverse, and it’s no wonder why, he’s revered quite highly by others as being a generous and kind admin.

I do want to point out one thing, and that is that Mastodon has some design decisions that make it rather resource and storage intensive.

There are oodles of lighter software out there, some with even more features than Mastodon, and some with less. For example, snac.bsd.cafe (https://snac.bsd.cafe/) runs on Snac, which is fast as hell.

I am going to guess that a not insignificant portion of Jerry’s bill is caching assets. Mastodon likes to save everything it encounters, videos, images, avatars, everything… forever (though I imagine this is customisable). Most likely the assets are viewed a handful of times in one day and never seen again… but you’ll pay to store it forever!

• There is a lack of payment options. A lot of people that use the Fediverse use it because it is the only Free Software platform that there is. And those people would be the most reliant of it to keep existing. Because for them to go back to Facebook or Twitter is not even an option. Yet those same people cannot donate because donations require things that are not libre. I really hope that more options will appear to support as many donation channels as possible in as many libre projects as possible. So those people that are the most passionate about the whole thing will be able to support it too.

Realistically, how many people object to using a payment processor online on the grounds of “it’s not FOSS”?

Jerry is a blessing

Thank you @jerry@infosec.exchange