[cmrdporcupine]

Seems like there must be some sort of possibility for someone to create some sort of "lightweight hosting" option here. Where you get your own bespoke "host" where you own all the data and identity, etc. but it is actually physically managed on someone else's infra (something higher level than a vhost). Pay a small fee, get a subdomain, get your own masto node, get your own data, all encrypted, but someone else handles all the legwork of setting it up, federating it, etc.

[augustuspolius]

Yes, you are describing a hosted instance. Masto.host looks good, and the cheapest option is only $6/month. The problem with this federated approach is that the actual federation features can become pretty expensive. Hosting is cheap but if you have thousands of followers from different instances federation processes will become very expensive.

[Kye]

As far as I know, this is all cached at an instance level. So only the first person to pull something from your instance actually hits your instance's resources. I can still see posts and users from dead instances because it's all cached on my instance. There's a rake task to wipe it, but people are advised not to since those caches have been what saved at least one instance whose name I can't remember.

[Spivak]

> "host" where you own all the data and identity, etc. but it is actually physically managed on someone else's infra (something higher level than a vhost)

Isn’t this just a normal Mastadon instance but with custom domain support just like email providers?