[mxuribe]

You're not wrong. But, i feel that this type of (paid) offering is the next best thing. What we need is many, many more paid providers, which helps decentralize things a little at least (and of course helps those less techie than some)...until your proposed solution is more easily implementable by a greater swath of the interested population.

[js4ever]

I believe it will come with time, we already have IPv6 and microservers like Pi, but then users have to secure, update,backup, monitor and upgrade the software and hardware regularly ... There is no solution yet for that.

So it's definitely an easier solution to use a managed service. BTW here is another Mastodon provider: https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon

Disclaimer: I work there

[harlanji]

Exactly. The key is that it's a paid service. And it looks to be based on Pleroma and they will export data and transfer domains upon request. As long as it stays like that and that's the bar across providers everyone wins.