Exactly that! I want to run a single-user instance, and Mastodon is quite heavy for that, especially when I’ll be running it off a cheap VPS.

You’re absolutely right - not sure what I was thinking about when I wrote that!

While technically true, I think calling Mastodon the smallest amongst them is a little indigenous. After all, wasn’t the idea of ActivityPub “protocols, not platforms”?

For me personally, Mastodon opened me to the world of federated social media, and I’m now hosting my own AP-based single-user social media page running GoToSocial. My usage won’t add to Mastodon’s MAU’s count, but 90% of my interactions are with Mastodon users, and I think that’s the beauty of the system.

They are also apparently requiring a €1,000,000 letter of credit for alternative app stores devs.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/25/apple-says-third-party-app-marketplace-creators-must-have-e1000000-letter-of-credit/

The update will also open up NFC access to alternative payment apps.

Apple does make it very clear that they’re being forced to do so by law, though, so don’t expect these changes to come out of the EU anytime soon.

I’ve been keeping track of this tracker and since July 1, peak comments/post per minute have definitely gone down. Although as the site mentions, you really shouldn’t draw any firm conclusions from that. Just interesting to see.