Since the start of 2023, I've been using my own Mastodon server, isfeeling.social, but today I've migrated my account back to the "default" mastodon.social server (where I'm @matt_birchler. A reasonable question is "why" and "why now"? In short, I don't feel like it's something I need anymore, and it's not something I think I want to keep paying $14/month for.

Do I like the idea of hosting my social media presence on a server I control? Sure. That said, I do feel like using Mastodon's main server is totally fine for me and it will come with some other benefits as well, such as being able to see accurate metrics like like/boost counts and all replies to the things I see in my feed. Besides, if I ever change my mind, I can just move off to somewhere else again. On the cost front, I could justify the cost if I needed to, but I just don't want to pay that right now. For the record, I have nothing but great things to say about Masto.host, they've been nothing but amazing the whole time I've used them (updates within a day of their release, effectively 100% uptime, etc). If you want to run your own server, I highly recommend them.

But I still believe in the Mastodon project and I want to see it continue, so I made a direct donation to the organization (you can too) to support the effort.