When I last checked in with you, the Mastodon server AkademieNL broke even and was easy to maintain. Around fifteen months later, both cost coverage and maintenance tasks have changed considerably. The consequences are at the very bottom of this blog post, so if that's what you're interested in skip the details and scroll to the bottom.

Costs coverage

I have spent ~$1,100 of my own money to host AkademieNL since May 2025. This is not tax deductible for me, even though it is a form of donating and giving to the community. This is too much to carry on my own, and I appreciate everyone who has donated to me and kept this amount from being even higher (looking at a few particular individuals in particular <3).

To make it clearer how unbalanced the current situation is in spending: I spend $3 for every $1 donated to the server. This is after taking into account the cost saving measures I already put into place by reducing content retention to one year. The donations that do come in, come from a handful of people only, despite there being over 500 accounts and circa 100 active accounts. I've requested multiple times for people to donate a small amount reliably, but there's little will to commit to that it seems. For the single one who has been donating monthly for over a year – you're a champ!

As a result of the current cost coverage the assessment is stark: The finances for AkademieNL are not sustainable and there's no momentum building in the right direction of getting more costs covered.

I never expected it to cost me nothing, but this amount is too much. Even if you're not on AkademieNL, your local Mastodon admins may suffer from the same issue so if you read this from the future, throw them a $1/month starting today.

Maintenance

Generally, moderation is not a very active task for me on the AkademieNL server. I sometimes pro-actively block a Nazi server when it comes across my feed on #Fediblock and when there's a reported post they're often unambiguous these days. I'm not sure I've said it before, but I am the sole moderator on AkademieNL.

In 2026, spam registrations picked up massively. I've previously posted on Mastodon about this, and a rough count is that there's 150 spam registrations for 1 real registration. This means it is nearly impossible for me to be a good assessor for those real registrations as they're likely to be marked as spam by me even if they're real! This all because of the low signal to noise ratio.

Screenshot of Mastodon post by the AkademieNL admin account. It reads: Spam registrations are up again. It's now approximately 150 spam registrations to 1 real registration. It is easy to miss legitimate registrations like this and it is honestly not really sustainable. Spam registrations were down for a moment when we added age indications (not verifications), but now at all time high again. This is now a daily moderator task that you will not see but is happening.

For some additional context: I get an email every time somebody signs up with their email and reason for signing up. The email addresses are often onionmail.org or another disposable email address. These are clearly not relevant and I believe there are ways for Mastodon to block these at the system level, but I simply have not done so at this time. Sometimes the domains are more innocent, such as proton.me and the assessment quickly goes to the provided reason for signing up to the server.

Given that the server is for Dutch research related accounts, most are already off the mark (in German or English and unrelated in any way). Over time however, I suspect these spam descriptions got more sophisticated. For example:

Gepensioneerd en op zoek naar andere informatiekanalen. Geïnteresseerd in computers, Linux, e/os. Hobby, lezen, bij voorkeur thrillers. Mijn berichten worden na 2 weken automatisch verwijderd

This is in Dutch and very convincing. Here the only give aways are that the username is the dreaded eight random characters, which signals a spam account, and the fact it came from a Tor exit node IP. I may well have judged it as spam incorrectly, but that is exactly the problem – there's too much spam to build confidence about real registrations!

Important next steps

  • Signups are disabled until further notice

  • Without a miracle, I will be shutting down the server by the end of the year.

I am aware that these are hard consequences. If you rely on Mastodon as an individual, please start migrating to another server, which may well be the SURF Mastodon instance. Migrate early so you're not really affected when I do shutter AkademieNL. You will lose your posts when you migrate – but you keep all your followers. Boost the posts you want to keep from the new server.

If you are an organization that relies on the server, where have you been? For me, this is happening at the same time as organizations are not willing to provide meaningful support for ResearchEquals, and I am generally demotivated/frustrated by the amount of free riding by organizations who claim to support open. Look around you and show up for the people and projects providing you with free services. I blame no individuals, as I appreciate that we are all subject to inflation, uncertainty, and all kinds of things that mean we cannot support the things we want to. In that light, I am reminded of this poster from Fight for Kindness, which is also a request for your grace in my decision to shutter the server.

Be rtuhless to systems. Be kind to people.

So in short: There is not enough for me to privately justify keeping the server moving forward. A lot of it has run on my goodwill, and I invested sufficient of my own money. As such, without that miracle, the server will be shutting down by end of year.

Thank you for using AkademieNL as much as you have <3