"In 2024, it cost $N to run a Mastodon instance with ~1000 active users for a year.

dominic :verified_paw:

@raphael @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke not necessarily. I think folks have a hard time understanding the value of services. especially when they're open source. people are terrible at value judgements generally.

Raccoon🏳️‍🌈

@lispi314 @craignicol @dalias @mekkaokereke
I want to note something, as the person in charge of moderation on a major server: there is a lot that can be done and hasn't with non-AI based automated moderation. Why is there not a feature built into Mastodon to...

- automatically report posts with racial slurs when they show up?

- automatically report when a user posts the same link several times in a row?

- automatically report when a user from your instance has been mentioned or linked on a hashtag like FediBlock?

- remind users of the report button when they get PMs that might be potential harassment?

We don't need AI. It would be wasteful, very costly, and likely have serious trust and reliability issues. We just need better systems to be built in by default to help us volunteers catch things quickly.

Rupert

@dma @raphael @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke If as a society we better understood the cost of "free" we wouldn't be in this exact mess.

Asta [AMP]

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] you know, this really puts the old "twitter doesn't make any money" arguments into perspective (in that their argument wasn't that Twitter doesn't make any money so much as it was "Twitter doesn't make money hand over fist for the capitalist backers like they want it to").

I still hear some variation about "fedi needs monetization!" and my first instinct is no, for a ton of reasons, but it's also nice to know that in theory, things can work out just fine and people can get paid for their time without forcing advertising or VC backing down people's throats.

your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

1. where are you incorporated?

2. in which country are your servers?

3. is this a solopreneur or there’s an actual team, with lawyers?

cannot impress enough upon #fediverse people how lack of an actual business team is a non-starter.

personally, country jurisdiction over your servers is the biggest issue. the fascists coming in will impound domains and blackhole sites even if the courts say they can’t.

cruelty & bankruptcy will be the point.

@dma @raphael @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke

Raphael Lullis

@blogdiva @dma @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke

The servers are in Germany, where I live.

Company is incorporated in the USA, because to be honest I am not ready to deal with German bureaucracy until I have meaningful revenue - which is yet to come.

mekka okereke :verified:

@aud @thisismissem @esk @dma

Facts.

The above post is much deeper and more profound than it might seem.

I want people to read it again, and really understand it.

When an Open Source or volunteer based initiative offers a similar service to a VC backed startup or publicly traded company, the odds can seem insurmountable, because the VC backed company budgets are astronomical. But... their budgets also include the need to both generate profit, and to grow at an exponential rate.

Customer acquisition is *usually* very expensive. But if you don't also have that same need to generate profit, or grow at an exponential rate, then you can operate at a similar quality, for a fraction of the cost.

"‍️ Meh. I don't care about hypergrowth, and I don't care about making a billion dollars." Is ironically, a devastatingly powerful *competitive* statement. It kills giants.

But you have to believe that all this is true, to fully unlock your mind to then believe that you can create something of similar quality. Because if you don't truly believe this, then you instead tell yourself things like, "I don't deserve good UX in my product, because I don't have $200MM in funding." This is self-defeating excuse making.

Mastodon is a unique "business" in that its customer acquisition cost is effectively negative.

Because the most successful Mastodon marketing campaigns, are negative "customer attrition campaigns" paid for and run by their competitors, that drive away their own customers, like Sonic losing his rings. They pay good money to drive their own customers to BlueSky and Mastodon.‍️

Johannes Ernst

@esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke @dma

These are really interesting numbers, thanks for publishing them!!

Johannes Ernst

@esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke @dma I believe Twitter before the acquisition had revenue of about $3/MAU/month, which is broadly consistent with your numbers.

{Insert Pasta Pun}

@dma @raphael @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke

in addition to jurisdiction -

someone also gave a talk that talked about anchoring the value at $0 (given that commercial social media costs nothing because of ads, why should their own one cost money?)

IMO communick could compete with e.g. masto host or elest:

https://elest.io/fully-managed-services/applications/fediverse
https://masto.host/pricing/

where they seem to target obviously your more techy admins with a mix of ease-of-use but also some console-ish/CICD-ish access

I'm not sure if it's a question of finding the right users on e.g. advertising on threads / techy forums, or some other way to get people in the door

I bet e.g. somebody like @jerry is either predisposed to be:

a) willing to do the sysadmin stuff themselves
b) executive-enough to delegate that to someone else for a fee as a service

I bet that's a question for user research!

maybe you'll find the correct addressable market

Raphael Lullis

@risottobias @dma @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke @jerry

I also offer managed hosting ( https://communick.com/packages/managed ) but like you said this is a different market.

{Insert Pasta Pun}

@raphael oh. wait those prices are /without/ it being managed?

ChatJERRYPT

@risottobias honestly, I think most people just want to signup and go. I’ve noticed that even slowing down the signup process by requiring a signup reason and moderator approval, which adds maybe an hour or two at most to the process, results in nearly all of them finding a different instance or just leaving altogether. I think we have this view that most people here want the level of control that running their own instance brings, but that’s not really the case. They don’t want to worry about what happens behind the app or the web page. Some of them recognize there is a lot to it and donate to support, but most don’t. @dma @raphael @esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke

Raphael Lullis

@risottobias

Managed hosting = you run the instance however you seem fit (moderation policies, block lists, relays), I manage the infrastructure (server, storage, updates). Prices vary depending on the software and the resources allocated.

"Basic Access" = you get an account on the communick servers.

Esk 🐌⚡💜

@aud @mekkaokereke @thisismissem @dma let's get (just a little bit) more scientific with datas

in 2024, #hachyderm received about $24k USD in subscription dues from individuals and a handful of small "corporate" accounts. it's actually closer to $23k but $24k is so much more divisible by 12.

this averages out to about $2k a month. so tracking against our goal we're at:

- $.036/user/mo
- $.20/active user/mo

covering the raw infra costs and with some room. far from covering people costs under Esk's Dream Model (tm), though.

--
ps. re corp accounts: they don't get anything special other than a badge that says they went through a review process. they get moderated against the Rules just like anyone else. no special treatment, no refunds. if we lose that subscription renewal, we'll make it up somewhere else.

--
pps. these details will be published publicly when I get some time later in the wk from $day_job to publish Nivenly's 2024 financial report. i'm behind, sorry!

--
ppps. the new post length is great. you could say it's super green.

Emelia 👸🏻

@esk you are now convincing me on the new post length. Would be interesting to graph average post size before/after.

Esk 🐌⚡💜

@thisismissem data all the things!

PierreNick :apple_old_logo: 💾

@thisismissem @esk Oh wow! Just realized the new post length! 🫨

I could write exactly 2105 more characters right now.

That was a really meta thing to write.

Nik

@esk @thisismissem @mekkaokereke @dma

I did a bit of a deeper dive into this, mostly as a fun intellectual exercise for myself.

Mastodon service staffing.md

Mastodon service staffing.md. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Gist (gist.github.com)

Caveat lector, worth what you paid for it, etc, etc.

Just Boby

@raphael Hi

Non tech person here, I have dumb q?

So I could have 6 person mastodon server (?) group (?) with my friends for 89 USD per year?

*dumb update edit: I see it requires techy knowledge to run it nonetheless. ( no idea about relays)