strangeobject.space blog

Shutting Down

Contents

1. TL;DR
2. Shutdown and Timeline
3. A Note from Esther
4. A Note from James
5. Closing Finances

TL;DR

• new signups are already closed
• recurring donations will be cancelled on September 23rd 2024
• no new donations will be accepted
• funding is secured for the remaining runtime of the server, see financial report at the end of this post
• the server will go offline and all user data and backups will be permanently deleted on December 31st 2024 at 12:00 CET

Shutdown and Timeline

We, Esther and James as the admins of strangeobject.space, have agreed that we don't want to continue running the server. Operation of the server itself and moderation of the community on it have become a major factor of stress in both our lives to the point where we can no longer sustainably do it. You can read each of our personal perspectives below.

This will probably be disruptive to many of our members and we're sorry for that. We've planned a three month period until the actual shutdown so people have time to find a new server, if they desire to. During this period we will post several reminders on the @admin account and also a server-wide announcement. We already turned off the ability to invite new people to the server through invite links which was the only way people could join, and today (September 23rd) we will cancel all recurring donations. We want to thank everyone who has helped us cover the costs of server hosting these past two years. Not only did that literally keep the server running but it was also a great reassurance to see people value our work enough to contribute like that.

The actual shutdown will proceed on December 31st 2024 at 12:00 CET. If you intend to migrate your account elsewhere, please do so before that. Since migration can take quite some time, up to several days depending on other servers, we recommend migrating no later than December 15th 2024 and preferably sooner than that.

Fedi.tips has a guide on how to migrate your account without losing follows and/or followers, lists, blocks, mutes, and bookmarks. Bookmarks of posts from strangeobject.space users will not be preserved as those original posts will no longer exist after the server is gone.

We also recommend downloading your personal data archive, which is entirely separate from the migration process. Posts can’t usually follow you to where you’re going next, but it’s nice to have a record of them. After strangeobject.space shuts down on December 31st, all user data including backups will be deleted. There will be no way for us admins to recover it.

We hope we could give you space on the Fediverse that suited you during these two years and that you find a good next home too. Both of us will also migrate our accounts elsewhere although we haven't yet decided where that will be. But there will be a way to stay in touch for those who want to.

Thank you all.

A Note from Esther

Hey everyone,

I’ve felt like I’m done with this for a while now. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself or told anyone about it before discussing the option of shutting down with James.

To me it's not the amount of work that goes into running this server that has made it overwhelming. Measured in hours it isn't that much really. I take care of the technical side mostly, which is basically installing security updates once a week or so, and a portion of reports that come in. Most of that is pretty quickly resolved because it's clearly spam, harassment or some obvious form of bigotry.

There are however times when it's difficult to untangle a situation in order to come to a good moderation decision. I can't know everything that's going on and often I would wake up and over night some major thing would have developed that required moderator action. That is not unexpected at all though. A lot of the people I interact with are in American time zones so obviously a lot of important stuff happens while I'm asleep.

I know that in order to navigate this, I'd have to rely on and trust other admins and moderators and for a while that worked pretty well. Those connections though brought their own issues too. Since we were seen as supporter or collaborators of other instances, we became targets too, with threats against us personally or our server, e.g. in the form of DDoS threats that caused me to spend time late at night trying to figure out if the threats were legitimate and how to mitigate them if they were. I’ve seen several attempts at this kind of backchannel support system, some more successful than others, and I consider them crucial to develop a shared set of principles for serious moderation. I also learned some very necessary and not always easy lessons from people in these spaces, and for that I’m very grateful.

But then I lost trust in that system. I won't name anyone here or go into specifics , but when I personally would have needed support from another admin a while ago, their supposed principles were put aside in favour of their personal allegiances, and I was left alone with the transmisogyny I was facing. Ever since I’ve struggled to regain my footing in my role as a moderator and admin and to regain that trust, without success.

I can't do this job without a trusted support network and ever since I lost that, I have felt more and more burnt out in my role as a moderator and admin. I don't know if there is a way I could do this sustainably. Maybe if our instance was even smaller, maybe if we federated much more selectively as others do, but that's not really the kind of space I want to be in. Maybe if I tried to scale back my own principles and cared less like also a lot of admins do, it could be easier, but that's also not what I want. So maybe I'm just not cut out for this work.

I've been anxious for months now that, if I speak up about the aforementioned incident, our entire server could get defederated. Perhaps it would be better to not have my own main account on the server I'm running, just in order to keep whatever mistakes I make from impacting others. But then again I wanted this server to exist as a space for me too. And that might also just be my chronic anxiety speaking, which doesn't make it any less difficult.

On top of all that, my experience as a user on the Fediverse has gotten much worse over the past months too. The amount of casual misogyny from arrogant and condescending cis men has reached a point where I think twice before posting anything that they might latch onto, which is difficult since many of my interests are things that they have opinions or imagined expertise on. It’s all nothing “big”, but many many paper cuts over time that have worn me down. In this regard the Fediverse has been worse for me than any other platform I’ve used, all while I constantly feel gaslit about my experience as many keep insisting that it is somehow “better than all the other places”. As a user it became another source of anxiety that made me spend less and less time on the Fediverse and as a moderator I felt helpless against it because even if I block or suspend each one of them, there’s always more, and reporting them to their instances’ moderators usually does nothing either. This also tracks with my very first attempt at finding a space on the Fediverse, several months before starting our own server. Any criticism of very obvious problems in this space resulted in harassment, dogpiling and threats against me while moderators of the supposedly “very well moderated” server I was on told me to just just block everything myself, which was a major reason why I wanted to start my own server in the first place.

All of this has made the Fediverse and my role in it into a thing I'm dreading, instead of a thing I enjoy. I think I need to separate my personal usage of it from running a part of its infrastructure again, if I want to be on it at all.

I'm sorry that this will impact other people who are not at all responsible for any of it. But I can't keep doing this, and handing it over to someone else also feels wrong because strangeobject.space has always been a thing that James and I did together.

- Esther

A Note From James

To the dear Strange Objects in space.

When starting here as an admin I felt tentatively confident about my ability, due to prior experience. But the James of 2022 was very naive and had a lot to learn.

In that first year I received death threats, abuse, and was stalked on more than one occasion (some of this I spoke about, some of this I didn’t). All of these were separate incidents and have no shared origin or reason. It also wasn’t a new experience, it’s sadly not that uncommon for marginalised people on social media to suffer this. So whilst it was unpleasant, I persisted and enjoyed running this server, being a part of it, and the wider Fediverse.

However, when it kept happening with more ferocity and a frequency that meant I couldn’t recover from one incident before the next happened, being an admin became something I struggled to feel good about - it became something that started to be synonymous with anxiety.

But I believed in (and still do!) our server and the small good I think it brought to the people on it. And let’s be honest: I felt guilty about struggling and didn’t want to let anyone down, so I kept going to my detriment.

And despite the shit, I am glad I did, because I learned a lot!

• I connected to communities that I wasn’t a part of, and learned their struggles and their joys.
• I had my ass handed to me a few times when my actions didn’t match my values.
• I made mistakes, and I learned through the support of other admins how better to serve the community at large.

One of my most important takeaways is learning that actually, I don’t have to sacrifice myself for others. The strange objects don’t need me to “protect them”, they’re all able to take care of themselves. If the server goes away, no ones going to perish - it is a stressful and upsetting thing but everyone who wants to will eventually find a new server, find new communities, and new friends.

So though it took a bit too long for me to realise, doing this is no longer a net gain. I must finally prioritise myself.

To the Fediverse at large: thank you for the gauntlet I ran through repeatedly. It was at times fucking awful! But I grew each time, and that is very valuable to me. And I believe there was and is absolutely more good than bad. The communities that existed long before we got here worked to build some strong and supportive spaces and we benefited from that tireless work, thank you.

To the admins I came to know: thank you for your support. Thank you for showing us the ropes and thank you for doing what you do. I really couldn’t have done a lot of this without you all and I am extremely grateful.

To the dear strange objects in space: thank you for putting your faith in us. I hope you do not feel it was misplaced. Whilst I am sure this announcement may be upsetting, I’m hopeful that you’ll understand.

And last but not least, to Esther: when you said you were starting a server only a few months into our relationship, I said “Cool! I can help, if you like!”. I don’t think either of us really realised what we were signing up for, what a ride this has been! I am so glad we could do this together. It was hard but if I could go back in time and tell myself not to offer help, I wouldn’t. strangeobject.space was an Esther and James project, and I am proud of what we did together. Thank you for letting me be a part of that. And of course, thank you for raising the question of whether I wanted to keep doing this. I probably would have gone on longer, if you hadn’t.

So … I guess that’s that. I don’t really know how to end this. I’ll just say thank you to everyone, again. Please feel free to reach out to me, Esther or the admin account, if you have questions on anything we didn’t cover here.

- James 💜🧑‍🚀🌱

Closing Finances

At the end of 2023 we had 847.16€ left in funds. As we said in our 2023 financial report, we donated 300€ of that. We decided to help out blackqueer.life with their ongoing costs, leaving us with 547.16€.

We haven't done a donation campaign this year, meaning monthly automatic donations were the only income in 2024. These amounted to 248.00€.

This leaves us with a total budget of 795.16€ for 2024.

Our expenses amount to 519.65€, split as follows:

After all expenses we are left with 275.51€ which we will use for a last round of admin pizza and any possible unexpected expenses in the future.

Thanks again to everyone who has supported us financially in running this server. You kept the lights on this whole time.