Self-Hosted Social Medias?

Hey lainons, recently been looking into hosting twitter clones and such for small groups of friends. I've specifially been looking at Pleroma and Mastodon. Anyone use these before? Are they worth it or nah? I don't really give a soykaf about fedicrap integration or any of that. I just want an isolated instance of a twitter-ish clone. I know you can disable activity pub integration, just wondering if there are any alternatives that you would recommend or any issues come up when running

What would be the point of using a fediverse server if you disable the main feature I wouldn't recommend running Mastodon. It's pretty heavy and seems like a bitch to admin (Rails application); when I tried installing it in 2018 I could not for the life of me get it to work. I probably could now but I don't see much of an appeal to it. Pleroma is okay but it's my understanding that it doesn't scale very well due to some issues with how the database schema was implemented, don't quote me on that though as my instance is pretty small so I don't have any direct experience with that. Pleroma has the added benefit of being somewhat agnostic of the frontend you're using, so there are a lot of options there. Another downside to Pleroma is the development has sort of stalled and mainly is centered around one dipshit who wants to try to turn it into a twitter competitor (lol) and add stuff like quote reposts (aka quote tweets). So it's currently being forked last I heard. There's also Misskey, which I've never used, but it's a Node application (ew) and is apparently pretty resource heavy as well.

Yes, the point of these seems to be the federation, without it I'm not sure it makes sense. Do you really want twitter or would something like IRC / several personal blog pages be more efficient ? I've run a pleroma node and personally the hassel of keeping it working was worth more than the node was to me so I took it down. If you don't federate it though a lot of the maintainance cost goes away and perhaps its worthwhile.

>>56954 >>56953 I suppose you are both right about the federation aspect, just was looking for something a bit more stylish than an IRC chat. I think I'll give pleroma a try then, as well as try to federate. Thanks lainons!

How about hosting an image board, but locked? You can use it as an SNS with your friends or family who you told the password for accessing it.

>>57096 This is unexplored territory as fas as I can tell, but I think it's a good idea -- imageboards are a really good way to organise things compared to e.g. a traditional forum, but it's not inherent that they have to be anonymous or public. I'd want to try and set up an imageboard just for friends at some point, but I wonder how many I'd need to have critical mass that people would actually use it.

>>57097 >I'd want to try and set up an imageboard just for friends at some point, but I wonder how many I'd need to have critical mass that people would actually use it. Yeah, That's the main risk when you host SNS yourself. Most people normal people don't want to create another account for the service which isn't popular around people. So I guess they don't want to join/register your SNS service because of they're kinda lazy and they don't really understand why do they use your self-hosted SNS even though there're many SNS which many people are already using now. Plus, In my experience, My friends and family don't wan to join my irc channel or xmpp. They don't understand why I don't use fuarrrking common SNS. So I guess if you host some minor services, they won't join there. But If you host an imageboard, there's a little hope. Imageboard doesn't have to require register. This beneifit will make normal people won't mind the registration.

>>56954 If it's a small group, you probably want a group chat over a Twitter-like / ActivityPub feed. It will stay up to date and feel less dead even when there are less people. Look into self-hosting Matrix, then asking people to use Element to connect to your instance.

>>57097 >>57096 When I was a kid I hosted a forum that allowed anonymous posting for my friends at school. It wasn't locked but it wasn't linked anywhere so only my friend group knew about it. It was active enough to be fun and useful. However, this was before smartphones, before social media platforms had live chat implemented, and we were all teens who had the free time to waste online. If you have a niche interest to tie it together or a group of friends who enjoys imageboards, I think it's worth it, but otherwise I think most people would prefer a group chat and are unlikely to keep up with anything else.

>>57099 Well it's not that they wouldn't start using it, I think they'd think it was cool. It's more that it would be the slowest board ever created, and people check boards in proportional frequency. So, it would have to have new stuff posted there decently often. I think I could probably manage with a few boards for things like music or interesting websites, that would mean people would gain something from going there. >>57107 I've not really considered this, but I've heard that hosting activitypub compatible things (pleroma, mastodon, misskey) is kind of a pain. I agree that it would probably feel less dead with less people than an imageboard would, but it's not really a "here's a thing" kind of a medium. >>57110 That's cool about your forum, it's nice to hear this stuff. I think we can go back to this age, the way things are going. It looks like it's getting easier to host services due to a small trend of 0-config things like https://maddy.email/ (I've not used this and I'm not endorsing it), and now that IPv6 is becoming a thing on home connections people might be able to host stuff from there more easily. We'll see. Anyway yeah, there's already a group chat on $corpochat that we use. There are replacements but everything that I've seen is high-friction. I think setting up XMPP would be The Way if I wanted to migrate everyone or whatever, since there are probably phone clients that work. Then again, imageboards aren't really a way to stay in contact with people. The main point about imageboards for me is that it's about the content, not the people. There are no profiles, names, etc.

>>57112 >I agree that it would probably feel less dead with less people than an imageboard would Well I didn't read the post that I replied to, apparently. I agree with the post and also with what I said.

You could try events-style imageboard which is open at certain time of day only like chakai.org, or something in the likes of howler.space NCSU imageboard chan if you have a large group. For a small group to goof out and easily welcome new participants you could try arranging access Dollars-BBS-style where all users share single password to enter. Other than that, any modern chatroom software is probably better than whatever you could arrange out or IRC or decade-old forum engines. Things like Discord and Matrix only lack separate chan style threads and reply chains.

>>57112 hosting pleroma is really easy, especially if its just a small instance, I touch the server for it pretty much just to run apt and git pull for like 10-15 minutes every couple weeks at most, maybe vacuum the db once every few months. Might be a pain if you dont have basic linux knowledge and hosting experience.

Federation IS the point of both of those projects, but if you Insist, you can just host your own matrix channel, or an xmpp one for talking with your friends If you really want a Twitter clone then go for pleroma, it's easier, faster and more lightweight and feature-rich than mastodon Or just use discord at this point idfk

>>56949 Manyverse with a pub of your own

a single-user Pleroma site would probably be good fun, though you'd have to be intentional about seeking out others to interact with >I don't really give a soykaf about fedicrap integration or any of that. federation is what removes the "everyone has to use the same website" requirement; if you disable it, it'll be just like a small forum or imageboard: you'll only be able to interact with other people who use your website specifically