Update: the object storage grew to some 500 GB but the costs are still around 25 €/month. CPU and memory are still quite overprovisioned.
Followers of #ResPublicae accounts have doubled over the last week or so amid the #TwitterMigration.
@CopernicusEU remains in the top 3. @EUClimateAction has sped up to overcome @EU_Commission, @vonderleyen, @europarl_en and @EU_Eurostat.
@je5perl @kik1 @joris Alright, I'm trying. Let's start from #ResPublicae: it's only me so it can't be too hard, can it?
https://respublicae.eu/terms
Someone reported that there's "political propaganda" on this instance. Quelle surprise! Political propaganda is what politicians and political institutions like the EU exist for.
Even the European Commission and the European Parliament are not neutral sources for the question "how good are you and your policies/actions?".
The source is clearly identified, so this is white propaganda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_propaganda
Some #MastoAdmin forwarded a report advocating for "deplatforming".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deplatform
That's depressing, because Mastodon is the opposite of an "internet platform". Indeed the #fediverse is a prime example for the slogan "build protocols, not platforms".
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech
#ResPublicae is not in the business of providing platforms.
Another example is #ECHA providing clarifications on complex EU regulations in response to public interactions.
https://respublicae.eu/@EU_ECHA/108827205380522728
https://respublicae.eu/@EU_ECHA/108827205477964658
One nice aspect of #ResPublicae is being able to follow how an EU agency or officer interacts with the public. For instance #EURLex personalised tips!
https://respublicae.eu/@EURLex/108607213455975828
#ResPublicae accounts now have more than 5000 followers! (Not unique followers, and some are bots.)
In the top 5 we have @europarl_en and @CopernicusEU; this might provide ideas for @admin / @EDPS.
Now 39 with some help from:
@eudelegationtur
@EUDelegationUA
@eusrbija
@EUinThailand
@EUinICELAND
@uni_eropa
@EuHouseSkopje
@AmbassadorEU
@WeBalkans
@EU_in_India
@EUAmbIndia
@EU_India_CECP
@kilianmcdonagh
----
locale count
ar 1
bg 1
ca 27
cs 13
cy 1
da 2
de 87
el 2
en 924
es 66
et 4
fi 3
fr 162
gl 2
hi 1
hr 10
hu 12
id 1
is 1
it 117
ja 1
ko 1
lt 10
lv 12
mk 2
nl 2
no 1
pl 5
pt-BR 2
pt-PT 25
ro 30
ru 1
sk 9
sl 1
sr 1
sv 46
th 1
tr 1
uk 1
(39 rows)
Here's a #MastoAdmin trying to make the #fediverse more #multilingual.
Current language count on #ResPublicae: 29.
----
locale count
ar 1
bg 1
cs 13
da 2
de 87
el 2
en 928
es 90
et 4
fi 3
fr 162
gl 2
hr 10
hu 12
it 117
ja 1
ko 1
lt 10
lv 12
nl 2
no 1
pl 5
pt-BR 2
pt-PT 25
ro 30
ru 1
sk 9
sl 1
sv 46
(29 rows)
----
#MastoAdmin: improvements to the signal:noise ratio based on the posting patterns of the past few months.
A couple dozen very chatty individual authors (each with over 2000 posts so far) now have crossposting disabled for retweets and/or replies, based on a subjective judgement that these posts were not predominantly related to EU policy.
Those handles typically had limited following, so the impacts on the fediverse were probably minimal so far, but sometimes it's good to be proactive.
Dear #mastoadmin crowd, does anyone know how interactions are calculated in the #Mastodon admin dashboard? Also asked at
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/18663
Upgrade to #Mastodon v3.5.3 completed. It took few minutes and was painless. The database migrations took few milliseconds.
Dear #MastoAdmin crowd, any idea how to force an update of the "interactions" statistics on the /admin/dashboard page?
Any and all "tootctl cache" commands failed to update the figure, which has been stuck for many days to the same (unrealistic) number.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#cache
A particularly prolific user was reported by a mastodon.social user for the volume of their posts. Configuration was exceptionally changed for that user in order to not crosspost RTs and replies.
Such suggestions are welcome directly to this admin account. Reports may not always reach us.
For transparency and in case it helps people considering whether to self-host a similar #Mastodon instance, the operating costs of #ResPublicae are currently a little less than 25 €/month (VAT included).
Without any performance optimisation whatsoever, the instance is currently quite overprovisioned and should have enough capacity to withstand over 1 year of growth.
Using a smaller instance would cut hosting costs by some 10 €/month, but reducing #MastoAdmin time costs is more important.
One frustrating #MastoAdmin experience is receiving a non-obvious moderation report from another instance and not being able to reply with a comment. I understand that #Mastodon wants to protect the identity of reporters (presumably) but this doesn't foster cooperative gardening of the shared space that is the #fediverse.
As long as we're running, our APIs are open. In case of shutdown, we'll do our best to deposit an #opendata dump on #Zenodo, so that any research value of the dataset isn't lost.
The overall database we can share in #CC0 but no single license on the text and media would be available.
Some data scrubbing might also be needed if #Mastodon doesn't yet provide a native way to provide dumps of public-only information.
This service is experimental and offered without promises of permanence.
We're mostly a privacy-friendly mirror or proxy which offers some more features than #Nitter by virtue of integrating directly on the #fediverse.
A long-term #digitalpreservation service for the EU's communication on social media would be useful, but we're not such a service. (A suitable institutional home would need to be found.)
Admin and host of respublicae.eu. Controlled by @nemobis.
The profile and banner photos are CC-0 by W.carter and GrandCelinien.