I feel like Mastodon's requirements are becoming so high, you already have to run an infrastructure business, have deep pockets, or willing to make considerable compromises to run it.

Rails is CPU and memory-hangry, on top of needing a postgres and redis server (both of which are probably the /lightest/ parts of the stack), and now ES on top of it all.

I don't believe this is the way it should be.

(Yes, I know of Pleroma, don't evangelise me, that's not what this is about)

"But you don't /need/ ES"

That's one of those compromises I was speaking of.