Is #Mastodon really viable for the small to medium-sized operator?
We assert, "NO!"
We did something simple. With a Mastodon tab open we hit Ctrl+Shift+E to get the Network Tab. With an inactive thread open in Mastodon, we went to another website to read an article.
An hour passes and what we discovered shocked us. Mastodon somehow justified sending us 55MB of data. The #NetworkTab said 55MB over 1500 requests (53MB transferred).
In 29 minutes, while typing the above, 62MB sent over 1200 requests (61 MB transferred).
Mastodon is a problem.
In an announcement our admin team did say that with a donation they may be able to shift to a different type of server, and we think that that is probably the most sensible thing to do. Ideally a type of server that respects the planet. Here's hoping that some funds appear.