Original link: https://blog.fivest.one/archives/6357
I talked with someone before, when I build a fediverse instance myself, I have some different experiences compared to being a registered user in other instances. Then I found that many of the things mentioned are still very new to netizens who have no self-built experience. So simply list them here for everyone to understand.
- This article compares the pros and cons of (self-built instances vs. registered existing instances) on the premise that “technical capabilities are not an obstacle”. Therefore, the fact that “the technical threshold is very high” itself cannot be a shortcoming of building a website…
- This article mainly discusses the situation of “building an instance for your own use”, and sharing it with one or two close friends at most; instead of “being a webmaster, open to everyone to register”.
Advantages of self-built instances
1. (Possibly) better stability
Yes, self-build is not synonymous with “unstable”; on the contrary, if the technical capabilities meet the standards, personal instances are more stable than many small and medium-sized instances because of their relatively low overhead. Even if I am fully capable, I am more confident in the stability of the instance administrator of a few hundred users than in maintaining an instance for my own use.
On the other hand, the webmasters of the existing examples may not all be very reliable. They make sites inaccessible for various technical, non-technical, and even comical reasons. Common examples include:
- Media files take up storage space
- Forgot to renew the domain name or server
- The webmaster is drinking tea
- The webmaster was unhappy and suddenly closed the site
At present, changing an account in fediverse is still troublesome; there is no import function of old account data. Therefore, if you want your own account to exist for a long time, self-creation may be a better choice.
And, self-built instances have better security. ——Programs like fediverse expose system vulnerabilities, a considerable part of which are triggered by “malicious attacks from users on the site” (such as uploading media files that contain code). If this site is only used by you, then this kind of vulnerability does not exist for you.
2. Better privacy controls
I wrote an article before ” What can Fediverse webmasters see?” “. A lot of undisclosed information of ordinary users is technically visible to the webmaster of the instance. If you have concerns about these privacy aspects, or plan to use your fediverse account as a private diary, then, if you build your own website, the possibility of information being seen by irrelevant people will be less.
3. Manage all your own data
The existing fediverse service program provides data export function for ordinary users, but the exported data content is very limited. For example, the data exported by mastodon includes:
- what you sent
- Your following / mute / block list
- The link (not the content) of your saved (bookmarked) toot
But does not include:
- The content that others reply to you – of course, whether you have the right to save “other people’s works” is a matter of opinion
- Other people like you (favourates)
- message you forwarded
- The news you like
The data export of other programs is also similar (twitter is similar); some even have fewer, such as support for mutual fo with fedi accounts, and the book management program bookwyrm, which users can export, can only be described as tragic (only book link; no book title and synopsis! No review of your book!). If you want to be able to see the information you have interacted with in the future, instead of resigning yourself to fate with the disappearance of the website, then it may be better to choose self-built from the beginning.
In addition, the search function of mastodon is very poor (especially in Chinese). The overhead of elastic search is extremely huge, and the effect is not good. Although I rarely use the search function, once I really have some information and need to find it precisely, it is much more comfortable to directly use SQL to search the database in the website I built.
4. Fewer on-site constraints
Many fediverse instances have their own internal chat “atmosphere”. Some speeches that are not in tune with the atmosphere may be resisted or even reported by other users of the instance. In many cases, such differences may have nothing to do with right or wrong, but they will somewhat disturb and restrain the speakers. Or, the webmaster decides, or through a “democratic vote”, that the entire site blocks a certain instance, and you may not want this. If it is self-built, be your own webmaster, such constraints may be less. ——Although I still see some reports from other sites occasionally, there is no corresponding processing and interaction mechanism for cross-site reports, so just ignore them. And, I don’t mean that you can post pornography or hate speech unscrupulously by building your own website, which may make your entire site blocked by other instances.
5. Use your own personalized domain name as an account
It looks cooler this way. But it’s just cooler.
6. Free from climbing over the wall
As fediverse gradually enters the field of vision of a country’s censorship agencies, the possibility of being blocked in the future will increase sharply for instances involving hundreds or even dozens of people. Relatively speaking, the possibility of being blocked in the short term is not very high for personal use instances built on overseas servers with personal domain names. Users of self-built websites can directly access the content of other blocked instances through their own instances without overturning the wall. ——Of course, climbing over the wall is a necessary skill, so this is not a big advantage.
Disadvantages of self-built instances
1. There is no chat atmosphere inside the instance
The main reason why a large percentage of users are attracted to fediverse is the chat atmosphere inside the instance. They carefully select comfortable instances, communicate among people with the same interests, and even use the local timeline as a chat room. For them, it is probably unacceptable to sing a one-man show in one person’s instance.
2. Others can’t see you / You can’t see others
The most inconvenient point of the existing fediverse system is: if accounts a and b are in different instances A and B, then only when someone in instance B follows a, the content posted by a will appear in instance B. So there are more opportunities to be seen by other users in B.
Such a situation constitutes a great obstacle to the mutual exploration between instances. It also makes the user relationship network of this decentralized model show a different structure from twitter (I have written an introduction to this before). ——Actually, such obstacles also exist for non-self-built users; but for personal instances, it will be more serious.
This situation can be improved by adding a relay; but this requires more server performance and a large amount of additional media file traffic, so it needs to be used with caution.
In addition, after you use fediverse for a period of time, you will gradually have followers in different instances, and your articles will gradually be mirrored in these instances, and the situation of “others can’t see you” will be improved. But the “you can’t see other people” situation will always exist. In particular, the account of the other party is not public, and the instance where it is located does not allow direct access to the personal page from the browser, so there is almost no way for you to find the text of the other party.
3. Cost: time, money, server overhead
Even without considering the technical threshold and the time cost of setting up and maintaining the site, the cost of simply spending on the domain name and server is about ￥600 per year. Of course, on such a server, in addition to self-built fediverse instances, many other things can be done at the same time.
4. Additional identity disclosure
When registering in other instances, although all your articles and information are technically visible to the webmaster; but other than that, what the webmaster (and possible reviewers) can know is only your email, and the ip address of the access instance. If personal privacy is properly protected, your real identity will not be revealed from this information.
The self-built server will leak more information. Including the information you filled in when you registered a domain name and purchased a server (this can be faked), and payment methods such as credit cards. Although the domain name can be hidden behind cloudflare, when you interact with other instances, the ip address of your instance is actually technically visible. Although ordinary netizens may not be able to continue to track down; however, for the state apparatus (not just China), your personal identity is difficult to hide. So, if you need to remain anonymous at the level of the FBI, self-built is not a good choice.
5. Your high authority may cause trouble for others
Privacy is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, being your own webmaster, the higher permissions you have may not be what other users want you to have. For example, if you create a poll, the webmaster of your instance (that is, yourself) has the ability to see from the database which option everyone has voted for. In this way, the anonymity of voting is out of the question. Sometimes even the person who opened the poll forgets this point. If the content of the poll is sensitive, they will be suspected of being peeping indecently… This is actually very incomprehensible. What kind of instance do you have to vote on so that everyone ignores the fact that “the webmaster can see every vote”?
6. More burden on the fediverse world
This is not a factor that needs to be considered when individuals choose whether to build themselves. But we must at least understand: the architecture of the existing fediverse world, as the number of instances increases, the communication overhead between instances will rise sharply. Self-built personal instances will increase this overhead. If each of the millions of fediverse users builds their own, the existing structure cannot bear it. This is also a problem that every decentralized network system needs to face in the future.
P.S.
- I don’t encourage anyone who doesn’t know enough about Linux system administration to build their own fediverse instance. The complexity of this matter has exceeded Xiaobai’s scope of following the strategy copy command. Even if you successfully run the instance according to the strategy, there is a high possibility that unpredictable situations will occur in later system maintenance, data backup, etc.; even affect your daily use and expression. Therefore, although I have seen many exceptions, some technical newcomers have built the site very well, and even wrote a great strategy; but generally speaking, newcomers are still not encouraged to try rashly.
- Each of the items mentioned above has different weights for different people. Some people may care a lot about one of them, but don’t mind another point at all; they may even think that the “advantages” I listed are actually “disadvantages”. These are all normal, so everyone’s choices will be different. Of course, I still have to analyze myself, why is the weight of each factor in this way? Does what you value contain the arrogance caused by “I can do it technically”? And those factors that are not valued, are they compromises to themselves because they have been “unable to achieve” for a long time?
- In addition to self-creating and registering existing instances, there are other ways. For example, masto.host provides proxy instance service, and you can use your own domain name as an account after paying. So there will be some features similar to self-built instances. But how it works, such as data backup format and database access rights, I don’t know.
This article is transferred from: https://blog.fivest.one/archives/6357
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