if it seems like the route we do want to go, i do think a kinni.es masto instance would be doable. but i don't want to make that decision right away, bc it requires an amount of buy-in (both in terms of time investment and money investment)
i would not want to set it up and then have it be abandoned in a week, y'know
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a 5 to 50 user server would not be terribly expensive, but any bigger than that and it becomes more serious that it's not an impulse decision
plus you have to figure out how to handle storage – are all the posts and images being saved on the server (this space will eventually run out, and would mean old pictures get cleared out every once in a while), or are you also paying for cloud storage