I just made an new Mastodon instance focused on #neuroscience at synapse.cafe . I'd like this to be a cozy space to discuss the wonders of the brain, from cells to thoughts. If you do research in neuroscience or even have a general interest in it, come by and check it out!
@seeingwithsound @lili another consideration is how available your posts would be considering federation. Many users have blocked larger instances during the influx of new users (to avoid timeline pollution)
@seeingwithsound My impression is that the up-time and responsiveness are based on a combination of number of users versus the amount of resources a server has. Right now synapse.cafe is fairly small and is super responsive. I'm not sure how big this will get, but the computer I'm hosting it on should scale to many more users.
In terms of long-term stability, I am committed to maintaining this for the next couple years, and in the worst case would give 3 months notice before stopping. There's a bit on the about page: https://synapse.cafe/about
@lili
Good points, thanks! I'll wait a couple of months to see how things evolve. I expect lots of change before the dust settles: universities may start hosting Mastodon instances on their IT infrastructure, but the big guys are undoubtedly also reconsidering their strategies. E.g. Google might try to lure people to a Mastodon instance of their own by offering high performance, ample storage, adding regular non-hashtag search, etc. After all they tried social media once before with Google+.
@lili Great! However, I still find it difficult to decide about the right instance. My biggest concerns are long-term stability (existence), up-time and responsiveness, but that does not readily translate into picking a large or small instance, or an instance dedicated to a theme. I'm currently on mas.to which I think has some 45,000 users and is struggling at times, but no idea if that will be better or worse in a year from now.