this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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I disagree. The large Mastodon instances have managed to survive for a while on donations. I haven't seen a large Mastodon instance go kaput (though you can correct me if I'm wrong).
There were certainly some that had to close registrations as their donation base was insufficient for the number of users trying to sign up. And others were sold to very questionable companies as they couldn't finance themselves otherwise.
But that wasn't my argument. We are talking about things that can go wrong with instances. Just because you didn't see any large instances go down in this "nice weather" period, doesn't mean they are resilient to serious shocks.
A small to medium sized instance that is basically run as a hobby by a few admins and is optimized for being cheap enough to not need donations is the much more sustainable and resilient instance.
Yeah but then you run into the risk of federation/defederation politics. We've already have had a major instance defederate.
That is why you would want to choose an instance that aligns with your values, so that if they defederate, it is to your benefit.
How is this related to instance size? There are large instances which defederate (I think most do), and small instances which do not.
If anything, I'd see it as an argument for joining small ones. There, your voice can have a bigger impact on federation decisions.
Mostly I think if you care about federation status, be sure to join an instance with a federation policy which you like.