I’m submitting this because I know a lot of folks put bots on this instance… including us. If you know of another instance that would welcome our bot, please suggest it.
The feature request is still open. Given the upcoming deadline I think it’s best I take the small chore of selecting an instance, signing up, and putting credentials in the config. But that’s still a large project could be picked up and worked on.
Dunno how much easier it might be, but ~edent has announced a simple activity-bot implementation. (Maybe not that easy owing to the Rails / PHP mismatch.) (Heh, I wrote this comment before I saw the lobsters submission!)
I migrated the bot to lobsters@mastodon.social. I followed the account migration steps, so if you followed lobsters@botsin.space you should automatically start following the new location in the next few hours. Thanks again to botsin.space for many happy years!
Couple small details:
The more tech-focused instances that folks suggested like ruby.social had guidelines that prohibit bots, so I went with a stable, popular server. The bikeshed is painted.
I can’t post a goodbye status on botsin.space for anyone who looks manually because I used the migration tool, so that account is going out on one last characteristic bit of mastodon jankiness.
There’s also a bug available in our integration for anyone who’d like to help improve it.
But given that nobody reported the bot was broken for the last two weeks, it seems like it’s better to put effort into creating a Bluesky integration.
Would it be worth hosting the bot on its own instance, hosted somewhere like https://masto.host/? Not affiliated with them but I do use them for my own personal instance and it seems well run.
I’ve been running my own bot (@lobsters @bots.grilledcheese.social) since one of the previous ones vanished, but it’s a custom server with an API that is not mastodon-compatible, so that would be no help here.
I agree with some of the other comments that mastodon is much too heavy-weight for a server that just hosts bots, though I sympathize that it was probably the easiest/fastest way to get up & running for someone already comfortable with rails.
But the recent Mastodon upgrade has caused a significant amount of performance degradation, and I think the only way to really solve it is going to be to throw a lot of money into hardware.
I sometimes think that Mastodon is an albatross around the neck of the Fediverse’s success. I’m glad that there are now quite a number of other instance serving software packages out there, but Masto is still far and away the leader in terms of sheer numbers, and I myself had the experience of running my own instance for a few years only to have the sheer weight and complexity of the Mastodon software make me throw up my hands and stop trying.
I hope other lighter weight varieties like goto.social start to take off so we can see fewer annoucements like this and more growth in the Fedi space.
Yeah, Mastodon had a big head start, but nowadays the additional resource load and extra sysadmin load make it really hard to recommend over alternatives if you’re going to start a new server. I expect it’s mostly still just dominating due to inertia at this point.
But another big factor is open registrations; I think this makes it much, much more likely for an instance to shut down. Here’s a thread from the admin of another masto instance that’s been around since 2017: https://toot.cafe/@nolan/113394607836985100 and he credits his instance’s longetivity to having closed registrations. He also says of the Mastodon version upgrade process: “I get anxious during big upgrades and my hands literally shake” which is like night and day vs the experience I have with my own gotosocial server I’ve been running over the past 2 years: https://technomancy.us/201
I’ve been running Honk for a while now and it’s pretty good. My main complaint is that I had to patch in support for avatars, because Ted is a weirdo who prefers generating gravatar-esque (but less easily distinguished) icons instead.
I’m still annoyed by the lack of a good way to refer to “a Fediverse-based microblogging service in the style of Mastodon but not necessarily running the Mastodon software”, though.
The “not showing replies” was a deal breaker for me. This, and server
rules that change on the whim of the server admin; One day I noticed
that some rules had been added into the regulations that placed me in
the category of people who are explicitly not welcome. So, being a good
law-abiding citizen, I removed my account.
I’m submitting this because I know a lot of folks put bots on this instance… including us. If you know of another instance that would welcome our bot, please suggest it.
What about speaking ActivityPub directly on Lobste.rs? IIRC Hunter had an old draft of how it could be implemented. Maybe it’s time to dust it off…
The feature request is still open. Given the upcoming deadline I think it’s best I take the small chore of selecting an instance, signing up, and putting credentials in the config. But that’s still a large project could be picked up and worked on.
Dunno how much easier it might be, but ~edent has announced a simple activity-bot implementation. (Maybe not that easy owing to the Rails / PHP mismatch.) (Heh, I wrote this comment before I saw the lobsters submission!)
I migrated the bot to lobsters@mastodon.social. I followed the account migration steps, so if you followed lobsters@botsin.space you should automatically start following the new location in the next few hours. Thanks again to botsin.space for many happy years!
Couple small details:
The bot seems to be working fairly nicely now, thanks! But it’s lacking a profile picture 🐘
I’d say any of the bigger instances would welcome our bot! Just mark it as so.
Heck, maybe it’s worth moving to mastodon.social for more peace of mind.
Would it be worth hosting the bot on its own instance, hosted somewhere like https://masto.host/? Not affiliated with them but I do use them for my own personal instance and it seems well run.
I strongly do not want to manage a mastodon instance, even of a managed service for a single bot.
I’ve been running my own bot (@lobsters @bots.grilledcheese.social) since one of the previous ones vanished, but it’s a custom server with an API that is not mastodon-compatible, so that would be no help here.
I agree with some of the other comments that mastodon is much too heavy-weight for a server that just hosts bots, though I sympathize that it was probably the easiest/fastest way to get up & running for someone already comfortable with rails.
I sometimes think that Mastodon is an albatross around the neck of the Fediverse’s success. I’m glad that there are now quite a number of other instance serving software packages out there, but Masto is still far and away the leader in terms of sheer numbers, and I myself had the experience of running my own instance for a few years only to have the sheer weight and complexity of the Mastodon software make me throw up my hands and stop trying.
I hope other lighter weight varieties like goto.social start to take off so we can see fewer annoucements like this and more growth in the Fedi space.
Yeah, Mastodon had a big head start, but nowadays the additional resource load and extra sysadmin load make it really hard to recommend over alternatives if you’re going to start a new server. I expect it’s mostly still just dominating due to inertia at this point.
But another big factor is open registrations; I think this makes it much, much more likely for an instance to shut down. Here’s a thread from the admin of another masto instance that’s been around since 2017: https://toot.cafe/@nolan/113394607836985100 and he credits his instance’s longetivity to having closed registrations. He also says of the Mastodon version upgrade process: “I get anxious during big upgrades and my hands literally shake” which is like night and day vs the experience I have with my own gotosocial server I’ve been running over the past 2 years: https://technomancy.us/201
I’ve been running Honk for a while now and it’s pretty good. My main complaint is that I had to patch in support for avatars, because Ted is a weirdo who prefers generating gravatar-esque (but less easily distinguished) icons instead.
I’m still annoyed by the lack of a good way to refer to “a Fediverse-based microblogging service in the style of Mastodon but not necessarily running the Mastodon software”, though.
Honk is neat but being able to say “Hey I like this!” feels like table stakes to me and that’s not included in Honk’s opinionated view of the world :)
His bat and ball, so he gets to build whatever he wants, but not my cup of tea :)
The Mastodon architecture decisions seems really ill considered on many levels:
And all of this architecture is so deeply locked in that I don’t see any of it changing.
The “not showing replies” was a deal breaker for me. This, and server rules that change on the whim of the server admin; One day I noticed that some rules had been added into the regulations that placed me in the category of people who are explicitly not welcome. So, being a good law-abiding citizen, I removed my account.
On the varieties front, there’s also snac2.
I’ll be That Guy and say that I’m not really interested in increasing the number of internet-exposed C programs I run 😬
The “AI” industry is very literally a bunch of parasites, in every sense. I can’t wait to see its end.
Don’t hold your breath. Even when the current bubble bursts, that just means you’ll see a temporary ebb in activity.
This particular grift is here to stay IMO.