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).
See our toots about the #ExploreTimeline and displaying boost counts, which encourage botFarms that game the algorithm, and create feedback loops to get user interactions based on perceived #popularity. We warned of it years ago (see #PopularityModel).
Forced Javascript is an anti-feature. Until about a year ago, Mastodon had basic functionality without Javascript.
So many unseen resources being fetched. Cryptomining at least secures the network.