The end of all that is! (again)

I've been reading about a lot of instances shutting down lately.With most of the headlines being grabbed by Mozilla. I don't understand the politics behind this decision but tech crunch is reporting that the Mozella instance had 270 active users. That's a rounding error for a company like Mozilla.

Here's a few things I tend to keep in mind when I read about an instance shutting down.

Mastodon usage spiked after Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and a lot of new instances popped up. That was about two years ago. At the time a lot of people posted that these new instances weren't going to last. This is now coming to fruition.

This is sort of how the circle of life works. I'm hesitant to use the expression "cream rises to the top" because a lot of quality instances are just not going to be sustainable. I've been through BBS's, DDial, Message Boards etc. I've seen a lot of user run systems come and go. Some poorly managed, some because technology marches on, some because of drama (ok, a lot more then some), and sometimes life just gets in the way.

operating a user run system is often a thankless job paired with a Sisyphean task.. but from my experience the best formula for staying afloat is benevolent dictatorship paired with dedicated volunteerism (YMMV), this is both a recipe for resounding success or unmedicated disaster based solely on the quality of the ingredients.

So while you may feel your favorite user-run system stays afloat may be largely out of your hands. One thing I do know is that the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.

and the more the system benefits as well.