Economists who want to use the platform to discuss economist topics? Why should public figures hide their identity on all their accounts?

I created a bot account for this, so all green on that front, will experiment with it, thanks!

Yeah, I let it run by night and saw what I did today. You are totally right, I will probably need to clean up a few things.

Not OP, but I’m using this one: lemmony on GitHub

EDIT: deleted link, I feel like I made a mistake, see below.

If you know the basics of AWS/Azure/Cloudhosting (spin up VM, create users, login via ssh, register URL, etc.): really low (1-3) with the ansible recipe. With docker not much higher if you know the basics about docker that is.

If cloudhosting is not your forte, but are reasonably skilled in basic linux navigation, configuration, and upkeep use a Hoster that is doing a lot for you like DigitalOcean and read their tutorials. Since you still don’t need to configure a lot the challenge rises to a 4-5 maybe.

If you have never heard of hosting nor Linux it still isn’t the most difficult project to start learning to do these things. Setting up rises to a 6 or something. But keeping a Linux server running over an extended period of time is much harder than setting one up. Maintenance is difficult compared to a MacBook or something, so be prepared to read up on backup and restore docker containers and volumes and how to keep your instance reasonably updated without breaking your server. This would still not rise the difficulty above a 7.

Small disclaimer: In the past I have used alts and burners on Reddit all the time. I have the best intentions to keep my instance up to date and running smoothly, but if something catastrophic would happen, due to me meddling with stuff, I’d shut it down and start from scratch. I’m not clinging for my comments I wrote drunk at 03:00 AM.

Host your own instance. When there is downtime it is your fault.

haha, I have the same experience tbh, but I still get the obvious “I don’t want to update my drivers or fiddle with settings and controls, I just want something that works”, responses. I don’t even recognize these topics as “pain” anymore, but this probably just shows how high my tolerance has become in the last decades.

I always compare self hosting to PC gaming: it has some very specific benefits, but you don’t even comprehend, how many downsides you will encounter you cannot even start to anticipate. If one doesn’t like the pain a little bit theses hobbies aren’t any good and I totally understand everyone giving up on them.