In response to Joe Biden and the White House enabling ActivityPub federation via Threads, a number of people asked: “Why didn’t the White House just self-host their own Mastodon server?”
Here’s some very basic musings on what it would take for that to happen. and what some of the hurdles are. Don’t consider it a definitive answer, but a jumping-off point.
Would be entertaining to watch it unfold. I’m sure team 45 would try to horn in if it happened. Might bring a massive influx of users. Mixed feelings. But a good writeup.
Truth Social is already literally a Mastodon instance. They just don’t federate with anything else.
Trump could open up federation, but that would ruin their safe space, I mean echo chamber.
They would also be instantly defederated by like 90% of the fediverse
And 9% of the rest would just be griefing them
Gab is in kind of the same place, with the same conclusion.
“Oh no, keeping a walled garden actually increases the value of my echo chamber! Better not open anything up to dissenting views!”