Had an interesting start to a conversation yesterday about Mastodon servers, and the driving philosophy under them.
And how you're either aiming to create a service or a community, and how these actually have different motivations and requirements.
And I thought that was interesting.
For a community, you *have* to ban early and ban often, and defederate early and often.
As an admin, it's your job to protect the ✨vibes✨ of your space, to promote community, and to remove elements that are toxic or harmful.
A service doesn't work the same way. It isn't attempting to create (or promote) a specific vibe, it's just *there*. You make of it what you will, find what you will, and (as an end user) block what you will.
The admin "just" makes the service available.
Launching an instance is either making a service or making a community.
But critical to this thinking I was having, you have to pick which one you're doing.
You can't be both.
And the corollary here is, when you pick an instance, are you picking to join a service or a community?
A service won't really care if you have a bad time. A community, if you fit with that community, will.
That depends on the instance. Most instances are services, mine, hackers.town is a community. It has other services and invite only
