I was doing a bit of research on LoRa mesh networks when I stumbled across this article highlighting various protocols and technologies being used in place of centrally controlled networks -- some quite old and some pretty new.

https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10231-recovering-our-lost-free-will-online-tools-and-techniques-that-are-available-now/

Hubitat can be installed to be 100% local if you forego firmware updates.  It has absorbed quite a few competitive IOT networks that have failed or are failing mostly due to cloud latency or security issues.  I'm using it in hybrid mode, since I've integrated Alexa and Sonos, but they are optional conveniences.  (A couple of users have worked out local voice control and a few are porting AI-ish, 'smart' motion detection to local only.) 

Thank you. Interesting stuff and interesting guy.

It looks like DO makes it easy to set up a Mastodon instance
https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/mastodon

And this is a good point

QuoteGit is a decentralized protocol, but Github has managed to make it centralized.

I use Bitbucket and have resisted moving to Github, though I didn't have the words to say why I resist. I have an account and have 1-2 things on github, but there's something that just makes me uneasy. That one sentence makes it all clear.

> Mastodon instance

There are managed Mastodon hosts out there. Turn key operations.  Like:

https://masto.host

There are others too.

Ah,okay. I was thinking that was like the Wordpress.com version, but I see it's more like a fully managed hosting like, to keep the WP analogy, Kinsta or WPEngine or WPMUDev