when I see that whichever instance I choose is defederated from another bunch of random instances, is it possible to have those show in my feed without making a separate profile from other instances? and can I turn them off again if I see that defederating was the right idea?
it is not that easy… you do need to understand the basics of the underlying systems (server/network/storage), and then be able to keep them up to date and running. and then there are the costs associated with it… i think with a stripped down lemmy you could get it runnin for maybe 10$/month.
That’s not too far off the mark, It cost me about $20 AU so probably $15 US. I could get cheaper if I wanted to host further from home (I’m happy with a AU host for my New Zealand instance)