Explain Like I'm Five

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Why won't fediverse instances bloat and pop? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If content on the fediverse is federated and copied to local instances, then won't instances have to hold onto a forever increasing amount of data?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I run a private Mastodon Instance. The server gives me the option to automatically delete the media-cache after a given number of days (I have it set to 180 days). If the data is needed again, it will be pulled from the original instance. Again. If still available.

An additional setting is the deletion of the federated content at all, which is saved on my server. This probably cannot be reverted, as the server doesn’t know anymore what to pull from what server… I have this setting at 365 days.

Additionally I can set my personal account to auto delete my own posts after a given time. With being able to set some excludes (favorited, bookmarked, posts which got a minimum of likes, …). But this is not a server setting, it’s an account setting.

Social media does not need to be saved forever. :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

We’re not using social media.

And this stuff does need to be saved forever. The biggest advantage of reddit was that you could Google anything and find a detailed reddit post about your issue/topic from 3 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is lemmy consider social media?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well you're talking to people aren't you

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always called reddit anti-social media since it is anonymous by default, and few people choose to fully de-anonymize themselves. That's one of my favorite aspects about this style of communication - while obviously some people still managed to get their ego involved, and that can happen even in brief throw-away interactions like 4chan, it's not nearly as bad as facebook or twitter where online behavior and interactions are tied to 'real world' identities.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this is a great take. It's medium for anonymous content, not socializing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Only text content is fully federated. Image posts are cached on other instances, but only the home instance keeps a "permanent" copy of the image

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Basically, data storage is cheap. Currently it can cost as low as $0.01/day for other instances to store the content that is being sent by the largest communities. Otherwise instances can clear out old data and let the larger instances be the archive hosts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah that’s a problem with web apps in general: their databases just grow and grow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fediverse must grow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This guy Factorios