This is the first transparency report where I will highlight key activities that have taken place on PNW.Zone since we launched in Nov 2022.
The First Couple Months
Infrastructure Setup - In Nov 2022 I decided to configure a public Mastodon instance for the Pacific Northwest. After seeing the increase demand for Masotdon capacity across the Fediverse, this regional instance is meant to shed some of the load from the larger instances and create an inviting home for those in or interested in the Pacific Northwest.
Blocklist Maintenance - In January 2023 I applied a series of blocklists to keep the PNW.Zone free of bad actors (toot).
Experiemental Client - In early February 2023, I launched the elk.pnw.zone client (toot). This provides an alertnative modern web client that users can explore.
Streaming FIx - In early February 2023, I resolved an issue in the instance configuration that prevented clients from properly streaming updates (toot).
DMCA Notifcations - I've registered with the US Copyright Office to receive and respond to DMCA requests. Our DMCA policy is located here.
Financials
As the costs for PNW.Zone have continued to growth, I've decided to open up donations (via Open Collective) to help offset some of the costs of running this instance. No one is required to donate to have an account on PNW.Zone. Please only donate if you have the means and feel like PNW.Zone is providing you value and enjoyment. Below is is an approximate summary of current costs, so that you have insights into what your donation would help fund.
AWS Hosting: $125/month
- C7g.xlarge instance
- EBS Snapshots
- Data transfer
Cloudflare Services: $25/month
- Cloudflare Pro Plan
- R2 storage (for all assets stored on files.pnw.zone)
DMCA Mail Service: $19/month
- Mail room service to receive DMCA requests
Domain Name Registration: $32/year
Email Service: $39/year
Approximate Monthly Total: $175
Future Projects
As our member base continues to grow, I'd like to bring another moderator onboard to help with account reviews and moderation reports. If you're interested in applying for this role, please contact me.
To allow our infrastructure to better scale with growth, I'd like to migrate the instance onto AWS Fargate. I'm exploring the widdix/mastodon-on-aws architecture.
Thanks for all the early PNW.Zone members. It has been a joy exploring and learning about the Fediverse with all of you!
- @[email protected] (PNW.Zone Admin)