I understood you correctly. For me “joining the fediverse” meant “setting up an account on the fediverse”, just like joinmastodon.org is mainly about creating a profile not necessarily setting up an instance.
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Got it, and now I realize that others were replying to your previous message rather than mine 
I’m gonna go and have my coffee and see if my brain works better then… 
Now that I understand what’s happening…
May I add social.coop to the list for consideration?
mastodon.green and climatejustice.global look like great choices too!
I might be running the risk of creating some disappointment here …
My point of view: After the slowly increasing problems with our current instance, my primary interest is that our new instance reasonably justifies the expectation of stability and – plain and simple – existing in the long-term. In my eyes, a certain size of instance is more likely to ensure this than instances run just by a single person. I would not rule out mastodon.social in this regard even when it’s not explicitly linked to any of the two main causes of Fairphone which in my eyes are fairtrade and sustainability. I had a look at the Mastodon accounts of Fairphone’s Fairtec partners last night and mastodon.social is used by two out of three of these. I also think it would be preferrable if the instance would be English language from the start.
Now on the wish that the new instance is somewhat like-minded, I would like to support that we not forget about the original primary cause of Fairphone, fairtrade. I am most and foremost an ecologist myself and only really got into touch with fairtrade myself a considerable time after I got into the Fairphone project. Ideally a new instance would unite both the “blue” and the “green” aspect, but from my point of view I would not mind an instance that is simply not clearly on one of these two sides.
One more point: Money. While I can definitely say that certainly both Ingo and I myself could easily afford to pay a little money out of each our own pockets to an instance, I think this should be avoided. It’s setting a bad example, just like it is a terrible thing to elect people who promise to donate their elected official pay. It seems noble and generous at first sight, but it leads to aristocracy. Don’t get me wrong: I do think it’s a reasonable thing to support your instance (and I have already paid a modest amount for that purpose in the case of my local Fairphone community – but out of local community funds), but it’s best if this comes from some sort of community funds.
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I had a quick look at the instances on joinmastodon and found these rather fitting as well from their self-description:
Those are quite small in terms of active profiles as far as I can see, but e.g. fairmove.net is run by the fairkom association who also provide lots of other services (that were known to me before). And I have to admit I see a plus here because they also offer a crossposter to Twitter, which I personally would prefer to use (Mastodon to Twitter only, definitely not the other way round; as it is the case with the current account and some other crossposter service).
I agree a lot with what Urs said but I don’t really like the idea of switching to mastodon.social as I personally would really prefer to be on an instance with a focus on Fairphone’s values. To me, mastodon.social would feel like a wrong choice.
Urs also raised a good point on the payment issue. I hadn’t given that too much thought so far. One of the instances I looked at said they ask for at least €10 per year. And when I read that my first thought was “well, I’d happily pay them €12 anually from my own pocket if all else suits us fine”.
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One more possibility that Urs and I discussed after Paula asked about people interested in joining an instance dedicated to the FP community here: Would you join a free, open and decentralized Twitter replacement for Fairphone users?
An instance called “social.fairphone.community” would make a lot of sense and would go nicely with what we already have. The domain itself redirects to this forum plus there’s https://map.fairphone.community/ and https://angels.fairphone.community/ already.
And because it probably wasn’t stated explicitly: we agreed that instances with at least two admins would be ok, just not a one-person-show.
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Looks like a good idea. I read the other thread. I second (or “third” or whatever 
) the social.fairphone.community option. It’s more coherent and it’s not as if we were actually having to type these urls every five minutes 
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Okay so how we going to go about this?
In the poll we have 5 people joining and 3 more people who would give it a try. I think thats enough for a small instance to start growing.
I offer to host the instance with the Fediverse Foundation. We have experienced Mastodon admins who can set up and maintain another instance with no trouble. Of course it would run on green energy too. 
Are you okay with that?
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Is it possible to have you as an admin plus someone else from the community here? (Ideally this would be an opportunity to broaden it, read: Perhaps we find someone from another country, not just Germany and Austria …)
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We’d have at least one person from the Fediverse Foundation as admins, probably two. All from Austria.
But we could of course have more + moderators.
ok, thanks. Let’s give it a little time, I’d want to hear Ingo’s voice here when he finds the time.
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I’m fine with two admins from the Fediverse Foundation.
Maybe one or two additional moderators, ideally as Urs suggested from other countries and from amongst the Fairphone community, would be nice (I have no experience how many moderators it takes to run an instance or what admins can/must do that mods can’t). But maybe they are only needed when the instance has grown beyond the initial stage.
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I would gladly follow any fairphone-themed profile anywhere in the fediverse / on mastodon, but would not join a separate fairphone instance as I’m on mastodon since last november and like it there: @christoph_STCmicrobeblog@mstdn.science. will look out here for what you come up with in the end. and thanks for your thoughts and activities 
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I’m not an expert, so I’m not sure if a 502 error means what I think it means, but right now social.weho.st (the instance we were about to leave for growing technical problems) appears offline. No idea if it will get back online or not.
I would just like to ask everyone to wait and give @Ingo and me a few more days to either still move our (currently unreachable) account from there to the new instance or create a new one from scratch on the new instance. Once that is done, we will certainly let you know and might also ask for some generous help and spreading the news then.
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Oh no, that sucks.
Hope it will get back up soon.
Problem is network effect. If you use Twitter/Reddit/Facebook/Instagram/… you’re part of the problem, but for companies (and broader speaking: NGOs, self-employed types) popular platforms are about reach. What one can do is at least have both, but that counted for many years already.
Yesterday there was a storm in parts of Europe including The Netherlands, Poly. Heavy damage in most of North-Holland at least. A beautiful tree at my daughter’s elementary school’s playground is gone. It provided shadow and the entire playground which was also new (less than year old) was build around it. Kids literally saw the tree getting derooted because they saw it happening at school. In Haarlem, a 51 y.o. woman died directly from a tree collapsing on her car. I’ll get to why this is relevant now.
The Dutch government communicated via Twitter that it was code red (stay inside). The NL Alert (cell broadcast emergency) came an hour later. So at around 8 AM, they communicated via Twitter. I drove my kid to school through the pouring rain, school starts at 8.30 so the alert at 8 would’ve been suffice. Normally we walk, this time I took the cargo bike to keep her dry. Delivered her literally at the door. By the time I got back my clothes were soaking wet. I get inside, change my clothes, relax a bit (it was my day off and quite an experience) and you know what I get the NL Alert that we ought to stay inside. My daughter is of compulsory education age, as almost anyone on school. And this was way too late! If they had done the NL Alert at 8 AM in addendum to Twitter, it would have saved children some trauma, and might’ve even saved the 51 y.o. woman’s life.
In short, government’s should not rely on proprietary networks to distribute vital communication. Yes, they may use it as one of their distribution channels, but not the sole one, nor the primary. Companies are of course more free in their choice, but if they don’t want to promote walled gardens they could either publicize via both or solely via an open, federated protocol.
PS: What I don’t like about Mastodon is that its not clear at all who runs the place. So I went with the official instance by the non-profit GmbH, though it was closed for registration for ages.
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I entirely agree about governments using their official channels and making sure those are fed first. Not a pleasant story.
As to who runs mastodon, either
- a) isn’t that the point?
or - b) (ask) Eugen Rochko or am I being very dense (it’s been a long and tiring day).
I think they meant that you often don’t know who’s the admin running a particular instance.
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Correct, privacy related. Its like with DNSCurve or using mirrors for say Arch, or Nitter instances.
And it does not mean one should not use such. One should be conscious about such though. It is part of the choice, and the choice is not a panacea. It comes with drawbacks just like any other protocol or platform.
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I’d like to come back to this point: the Dutch government has set up a Mastodon server at https://social.overheid.nl and my hope/wish is that they’ll use that instead or additionally to Twitter (but not instead of cell broadcast).
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