In the fediverse, the platform "Misskey" developed by Japanese developers has a brand image closely tied to anime subculture. Its largest instance, "misskey.io," boasts an impressive 500,000 users. Taking advantage of a family visit to Indonesia, I had the opportunity to interview Sandy Corzeta, the administrator of the "misskey.id" instance.
We conducted our interview at a café in downtown Surabaya, East Java, where Sandy appeared quite young and modest, speaking fluent and elegant English. As the administrator of Indonesia's (almost) only public fediverse instance, what kind of journey has Sandy been through? Let's dive into our conversation!
Meeting Misskey
During my last two or three years in university, social networking sites started becoming popular. Among the mainstream services, my favorite was actually Google+! Besides that, I also tried registering on Mastodon, and later noticed a user whose profile wasn't from Mastodon. When I followed them, I discovered they were actually from misskey.io!
I found Misskey's design quite unique, so I created an account there too. But a few months later, an accident caused all the server data to disappear, and all my posts from that period vanished into thin air. This made me start thinking about setting up my own instance—a place that would belong to Indonesians. (Editor's note: Being able to see familiar languages on the local timeline is really important!)
When I first established misskey.id, not many people in Indonesia had heard of Misskey, so I started by pulling people from my own circle of friends—good friends and music-related online acquaintances. Basically, it grew to its current size through word of mouth, with daily active users typically ranging between 50 to 100 people. In 2022, there was a period when the instance's user count suddenly grew by one or two hundred people, and I thought I'd need to upgrade the server. But after two or three weeks, the active user count dropped again. I think Indonesians tend to follow trends easily, and once the hype passes, they just walk away without looking back (Editor's note: People from every country do that! 😅). Actually, this works out fine, because my original intention for self-hosting was just to maintain a small garden.
The Journey of Operations
When I first established misskey.id, the server specs were 1 CPU and 2 GB RAM, but whenever users tried to search, the instance would crash. I switched between several platforms, constantly looking for a service provider that could work long-term. Later, an Indonesian friend living overseas recommended a service provider that met our hardware needs for just $6 per month, so we settled there and have stayed ever since. Currently, the data center is in Europe, which theoretically means slower connection speeds, but switching to an Asian data center would cost an extra $2 per month. I think maintaining the status quo is fine—if we get more users someday, we can consider it then.
Besides us, Indonesia doesn't seem to have any other public fediverse instances still operating. I remember in 2022, a "mastodonindonesia.com" was established, but it probably lasted only about a month before shutting down. There was also an "mstdn.id" that operated a bit longer, but eventually closed too. I can actually understand this—it might be due to financial pressure. For me, funding only became more stable after I started using the "trakteer.id" donation platform.
We at misskey.id actually haven't established user guidelines, but everyone's an adult, so they interact based on common sense. So far, there haven't been any major controversies. We've had users reported by other instances before, and as an admin, I'll first try to communicate and resolve the issue—most of the time it works out. We only block extremely radical instances, like the infamous Kiwi Farms from overseas.
(Editor: I can't really imagine how people can attack others on the fediverse?)
(Sandy: It's like you're leisurely strolling in a garden, and suddenly someone runs up to you and starts yelling!)
Hopes for misskey.id
Compared to other fediverse platforms that emphasize "minimalism," Misskey has some very special features, including customizable widgets and the Channel function that I really love—some people say it's like Facebook groups, but it actually reminds me more of Google+. These are very attractive features.
As for organizing users or increasing user numbers, I don't really have any particular thoughts about that. I'm just a technical guy who wants to build a comfortable small garden. However, like the Japanese Misskey community, which has developed quite extensively with very active channels on different topics, what's more interesting is that there are many anime-related users among them, and they can even publish their own art collections. If misskey.id were to promote itself, it might be something like that—maybe publish a small comic to introduce Misskey!
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Some Casual Chat
Sandy: During university, I studied Japanese language and culture at the Faculty of Humanities. My current profession is as a musician—I create music using software.
Editor: I thought you were a software engineer?
Sandy: I got into the IT field mainly during high school. After graduating high school, I worked as a software engineer for one years before going to university, but it took me seven years to graduate from university, haha! I also taught myself music skills during my university years.
(Editor's note: That level of multitasking and self-learning ability is incredible!!)