@atomicpoet not if it's scaled. Yes if it ceases to...

@atomicpoet not if it's scaled. Yes if it ceases to operate at all. Just like Mastodon instances that fail. You may get historical posts on Mastodon because they are on other instances but that is not scaling that's a kind of eventual consistency.

Don't confuse scaling for traffic with resilience of an overall service made up of independent operators. Resilience, product resilience is important but it is not the same as scaling to a level of traffic that's magnitudes greater than at present.

Like 8 Apr 2023 at 9:45 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.social

3 comments

Chris Trottier replied to Simon

@simon_lucy You miss the point. Scale doesn’t even matter if Big Social pulls the plug on the service.

On the Fediverse, that will never happen.

Whatever scaling benefits you believe come from centralization ultimately means jack if the service lacks persistence. Which eventually is going to happen for Big Social—it’s always a matter of time.

Meanwhile, the Fediverse is now sending 1 billion messages per month. And it’s doing this because 22,000+ instances are federating right now.

8 Apr 2023 at 9:55 | Open on mastodon.social

Simon Lucy replied to Chris

@atomicpoet

At which point did I say centralisation?
You're using the term scaling in an entirely inappropriate way.
How many of those billion messages are unique? How many get to be viewed or themselves cause further messages. Just spouting numbers out of context makes no sense.

Scale always matters and it makes no difference whether it's what you call centralised, single ownership, or multiple individual ownership.

8 Apr 2023 at 10:53 | Open on mastodon.social

Chris Trottier replied to Simon

@simon_lucy Bullshit. I'm using scaling in the context of "How does 1 billion messages get sent."

And it's 100% true that the Fediverse is capable of sending 1 billion messages per month, as we've already just seen.

8 Apr 2023 at 10:57 | Open on mastodon.social