Deprecation Notice

At the end of the day on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, the Mastodon instance vmst.io will cease operations after nearly four years.

Between now and then, users will have the opportunity to export their account data, migrate their social connections, and find a new home on the Fediverse. Effective immediately, many of our services, such as advanced search, will be disabled so we can allocate resources to prioritize account migration requests. All monthly donation renewals through Ko-Fi and Patreon were cancelled on June 15.

While the decision to close the instance might seem sudden, it’s something I have quietly considered for some time. The abrupt announcement last night has led some to wonder about my personal health. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.

Simply put, continuing to run the instance as it has always been has required a substantial personal investment of thousands of dollars per year. Each month’s hosting bill exceeded donation revenue by over 2x. These were all choices that I made to provide the best possible experience for our dwindling number of active users, and for the last three years I was willing to sacrifice for the mission.

The rising cost of compute across the planet has made continuing operations unsustainable.

Add to this the rise of AI as an attack vector and the increasing legal scrutiny in the United States and around the world about social networking, and it presents unacceptable risks to me personally of continuing to run a service like this. The increase in more sophisticated spammer sign-ups over the last few months is minor compared to what is coming. Administrators are not prepared. Platforms are not prepared. Open source, in general, is not prepared.

And in saying we are not prepared, that isn’t a slam against anyone. The Fediverse is full of very intelligent, diligent, and passionate people who want this to succeed. These are problems commercial platforms and software have to deal with as well, and they are failing at it already. The Fediverse exists in relative obscurity today, and has struggled to keep up with the threat landscape as it existed in 2022. That obscurity is what protects it. It won’t last forever.