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Ask HN: Mastodon instances run by non-profit foundations (not individuals)?

10 points by distcs ↗ HN
So I am trying to get on this Mastodon bandwagon but what really bothers me is that many many Mastodon instances are run by individuals. What if they shut down the instance? It happened to mastodon.technology. It can happen to any instance.

Migrating an account to a new instance is unfortunately neither simple nor complete. You can migrate somethings but not your entire profile. When a Mastodon instance goes down, you risk losing a lot of your posts and followers.

So I'm looking for Mastodon instances that are run by non-profit foundations. They can provide better guarantees of being around because just one person losing interest will not dissolve the foundation. The other members keep the foundation alive who keep mastodon instance alive.

Don't tell me to run my own instance. I know it is possible but I'd rather not get into maintaining my own instance. Too much work. Not exactly excited about setting up a Ruby stack on my VPS/container either. I'd rather use a non-profit instance and donate money to it to keep it running.

So do you know about Mastodon instances run by non-profit foundations?

4 comments

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latexr
Mozilla has an instance, but you currently need an invite. The company behind Mastodon is also a non-profit and runs a couple of instances.

https://mozilla.social/

https://mastodon.social/

https://mastodon.online/

distcs
Wow! Had no idea mastodon.social/online are non-profit. So all these days I was avoiding mastodon.social/online because people have been telling me that they are too big to fail and anything that is too big to fail can make hostile decisions to its users anytime. But I feel better about them knowing they are non-profit.
gtirloni
I think Mastodon and "too big to fail" don't go together in the same sentence (currently). In any case, fediverse, decentralization, freedom to change, etc...