yeah. frustrating. in fairness the model *is* more complicated but thats bc its trying to both provide a good UX *and* meaningful decentralization

Yup. And it’s more challenging to self-host the whole stack (PDS, relay, app view), though it seems like we’re nearing a tipping point where there’s enough lightweight options that you reasonably could. But Mastodon admins hosting instances in the US need to be very aware of these laws as well.