5d ago

What tech skills are needed to host Fediverse platforms for a community of people?

I'm ready to completely jump in to using decentralized, federated platforms, however most people I know aren't fully there. It strikes me that this moment in time, where a lot of people are newly actively aware and frustrated by Meta and Twitter's actions, is ideal to get people to switch over to new platforms.

To encourage people in my community to join platforms on the Fediverse, I want to host instances of various platforms (probably Mastodon and Pixelfed to start with). Having a specific instance on these platforms to point people towards would probably help a lot of the folks I know get on board.

However, I'm scared I'm not knowledgeable enough to admin these public instances for others. I know some basic networking, I self-host a bunch of stuff with Docker on an old laptop, and I definitely am smart enough to figure out how to start up instances of these platforms. However, I'm mostly concerned with whether I'd be able to properly maintain and secure these instances. I wouldn't want people to be soured on decentralized social media just because I don't know what I'm doing.

Any thoughts, words of encouragement, tips, warnings, etc. are welcomed!

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Would you simply host for yourself or for others?
The issue I have with self-hosting is that the day something goes wrong, you lose your account along with all your posts. And if you host for others, they also lose all of theirs.
I know this isn't the answer you were looking for. But I have the knowledge to self host and all. I have 17 years of experience as a Linux sysadmin, a software developer and now a DevOps specialist. And I honestly don't want to bother because of the responsibility. However, there are organizations and non-profits who have the resources to host stable long-running instances. But they need money. So I donate to the instances I use instead.
But it you REALLY want to learn, start learning about Linux web servers, databases, networking, containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes) and a good bit of cybersecurity. Hosting stuff on your laptop is a good start.
- Hey sorry for the late reply, I just wanted to say I really appreciate your perspective here! It's definitely made me simmer down a bit instead of jumping in head first. I'll try it out for myself and a few friends first before trying to recruit everyone I know :P
  Part of why I want to do this is that I do want to learn more about all the stuff you mentioned (except Kubernetes, gosh everytime I look up documentation for it I drown in a swarm of terminology).
  As who very much doesn't work in IT, computer stuff is a fun hobby for me. I can see how assuming the responsibilities for hosting an instance could make it less fun and more work, though.
  
  That okay.
  If you want to host just for yourself that's okay. Just be careful about cybersecurity. You don't want that box to become an easy entry point for hackers.
  Having self hosted before the age of the cloud, on my own personal PC, I highly recommend to have a seperate box on a DMZ part of your router and only open the required ports. And use a super stable distro like Debian stable. You don't want the bleeding edge on there as there could be bugs and vulnerabilities that haven't been patched yet.
  If you need to access it remotely, use SSH and disable root login and only allow logging in using SSH keys. Disable password login. And update often and back-up often!
  Finally, keep all eye on the issues of the GitHub pages for your fediverse app so you can be aware of any important updates and patched or vulnerabilities. Shut down your service if there's an important vulnerability that's not fixed yet.

10 comments