You can find Smutlandia here: http://smutlandia.com/
Personal Reflection after One Month as a Mastodon Admin
Creating and maintaining a Mastodon server has been an interesting journey. Only one month has passed. There’s a lot more to learn. There’s a lot more to improve. I hope the following can help give some insight to some who are intrigued by Mastodon from the administration side of things.
Why I built a Mastodon Server
I built a Mastodon server mostly because I could. I happen to know enough about web app hosting to get into trouble like hosting a server like this. When Twitter leadership changed in early November, Mastodon’s federated approach seemed like a reasonable antidote to the turmoil plaguing a website the world has relied on. There’s a single captain steering that ship and I don’t trust him.
Mastodon is not run by a single person. It is hosted across a network of servers and I could be one of those servers. In fact, I could host a server I would have complete control over. Maybe I could share that control in a cooperatively owned fashion one day.
Now What?
I have just started to fuck around. I’m already finding out stuff though. The following report is a bit about that.
For the curious and who want to know more
If you’d like to learn more about Mastodon and the “Fediverse”, here is information from people who know more about this stuff than me. My apologies, but some of this gets pretty technical.
General Fediverse and Mastodon Tips:
https://fedi.tips/
A pretty in-depth explanation about Mastodon: https://medium.com/whither-news/on-joining-mastodon-d539eed5e41a
A REALLY in-depth explanation about Mastodon: https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2022-11-03_what-i-know-about-mastodon/
BLUF
During the first month of the Mastodon server, Smutlandia had quick growth with half of the users actively using it with no issues.
The Numbers
About Smutlandia
Smutlandia was installed as a platform that uses the Mastodon protocol by the romance book reviewer, EJ, who runs the blog called “Monster Romance Reviews”. Their concern was whether there would be a reasonably safe refuge for members of the erotic romance (smut) community to communicate using a microblogging format.
Mastodon is a protocol that connects hundreds of websites like Smutlandia together around the world. Smutlandia is a server with explicit content. Its specific rules and policies can be found on the website ([https://smutlandia.com/about/more](https://smutlandia.com/about/more)).
Basic Facts and Numbers
People
Total Users 79
Active Users the week this report was compiled 40
*Note: We have no numbers as of yet on blocked accounts or domains. The assumption is that this number will eventually change. The server admin will take domains into consideration for banning. Domains that actively promote content discouraged by our policies qualify for an immediate ban.*
Technology
Item URL Registration
Price $8.99
Additional Notes Not a monthly Expense. Yearly. Billed to Dreamhost.
Item SMTP and URL Management
Price $10.99
Additional Notes Pro-rated monthly expense for Dreamhost Unlimited plan, which includes email hosting for Smutlandia
Item Media storage for data such as images
Price $2.25
Additional Notes Housed on the Google Cloud Platform
Item Server Hosting
Price $57.70
Additional Notes Housed in Digital Ocean using the Mastodon Server Droplet (https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/mastodon)
Total $79.93
Improvement Opportunities
Currently, the server has expenses though no resources to cover those expenses. There are two potential ways to address this.
Form a Cooperative Business with the Server
There are many forms of cooperation. There are state governments in the United States such as Illinois that would recognize the legality of a cooperatively owned business like Smutlandia could be. Put simply and generically, cooperative owners would invest in the business and jointly own the server. The owners would have voting rights that would allow them to control the business and how it is run. So, Smutlandia could be controlled by users on it.
Set up a Patreon or Kofi
This is rather self-explanatory. Platforms such as Kofi and Patreon would allow users to support the server through donations.