when I see that whichever instance I choose is defederated from another bunch of random instances, is it possible to have those show in my feed without making a separate profile from other instances? and can I turn them off again if I see that defederating was the right idea?
You could host your own instance, that way you’re completely in control. I’m also doing that, just because I don’t want people(mods, owners) to decide for me who I interact with or not.
I’m probably “technical enough” to do that, but I’ve heard that from that point on I’m managing my own infosec- is that the case?
Yes, but It’s pretty hands off since 99% of security stuff is managed for you by the Lemmy software, including rate limiting. Just make sure you use a secure password and if you want put the instance behind cloudflare which is super easy to do.
Is it as easy as “create instance” or does it involve setting up a server and other cloud based software?
it is not that easy… you do need to understand the basics of the underlying systems (server/network/storage), and then be able to keep them up to date and running. and then there are the costs associated with it… i think with a stripped down lemmy you could get it runnin for maybe 10$/month.
That’s not too far off the mark, It cost me about $20 AU so probably $15 US. I could get cheaper if I wanted to host further from home (I’m happy with a AU host for my New Zealand instance)
If you don’t care about the technical stuff, have money to spend, and just want an instance you have complete over: services like this will take care of the difficult parts for you. All you need to do is point a domain at one of their servers. There are probably others as well; the point is, there are people you can pay to do all the hard parts for you, at the cost of some control and customisability.
Doing Lemmy hosting yourself, if you don’t already have a server already, involves the following:
- Get a server somewhere. VPS, raspberry pi, something that can run software and can have a domain pointed at them. Oracle Cloud has a generous free tier, VPS providers start at about $4 per month, an old laptop or raspberry pi costs purchase price + electricity cost.
- A domain. Should cost you about $10 per year. If you want to use a local server but don’t have an IP address to point a domain at. you can use a Cloudflare tunnel instead.
- Configure the server. You’ll probably want to use Linux, but you can get it working on Windows. If you get a VPS, you had to pick an OS already; you probably also noticed that Linux is free and Windows costs extra.
- Follow the steps over here, here, here, or here depending on your chosen platform. The Ansible setup seems to be what the Lemmy devs test most, based on the upgrade notes, but I use the Docker setup myself.
- Continue the instructions here and just go page by page.
If you know your way around Linux, setup should take 30 minutes, give or take some time for purchases and registration to come through. If you’ve never used Linux, I expect setup time to be one or two days, depending on how quick you pick up on it, filled with frustrated Googling about how to edit a text file through the command line and how to exit
vim.You’ll probably also want to set up a calendar reminder to check on your server every once in a while, just in case. Probably best to check for new/upcoming Lemmy releases every other week or so, and you’ll probably want to keep an eye on the disk space being eaten up by Lemmy over time as well. If you’re using a server OS, make sure to enable automatic updates to save yourself the effort of having to keep an eye out for security vulnerabilities; something like Debian’s
unattended-upgradesshould be sufficient for 99% of all software, especially if you schedule a weekly reboot.If you have some Linux administration knowledge (i.e. you’re a programmer), the brief steps are as follows:
- Run Lemmy + postgres through Ansible, Docker, or some other method on a host of your choice.
- Configure A + AAAA records for your server.
- Enable Let’s Encrypt through a reverse proxy
- Configure Lemmy to your liking
If the instance defederates, users do not have an option to interact with the defederated instance anymore. The only choice you have then is to join an instance where the moderation policy agrees with your values or host your own instance. If you just want to see if defederation was the right idea, you could just visit those instances directly and look at their local timeline.
You can just go to that instance’s webpage and view their frontpage. It’s worth noting that NSFW posts are often hidden without an account though, so if an instance was defederated for NSFW content it might not be obvious why.
