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Mike McCue

@controlfreak I think you're raising a good point here if I understand you correctly. Specifically: how will smaller instances handle federating with larger instances as the fediverse grows?

This is worth a lot of effort to figure out because we don't want the fediverse to become just a collection of a few really big instances. Smaller instances provide more choice for users broadly and will be inherently better at serving users locally. I think how relaying works will play a key role here.

14 Dec 2023 at 0:34 | Open on flipboard.social
4 comments
Rober

@mike @controlfreak That will not be a problem. With the current model instances do not federate all the content from other instances, but only the accounts that are followed.

It doesn't matter the size of federated instances, only the amount of people on your instance an the amount of accounts followed on remote instances.

14 Dec 2023 at 8:46 | Open on im-in.space
controlfreak

@Roboron @mike forest and trees G. transience is still a problem. apologies for not being a gifted wordsmith but how does this shake out, small (masto) instance trying to stay federated with bigger (masto) instance that are already bogging things down due to big followed accounts on a big server will continue to get worse when say the big server (massoc) is now federated and getting more pummeled itself with push noise from a boatload of takeis and brands on threads. It doesnt matter if the small instance is only following a couple bigs on the middle one, all the transient bloat and lag pains will shovel downward to most affect the lowest resource party

@Roboron @mike forest and trees G. transience is still a problem. apologies for not being a gifted wordsmith but how does this shake out, small (masto) instance trying to stay federated with bigger (masto) instance that are already bogging things down due to big followed accounts on a big server will continue to get worse when say the big server (massoc) is now federated and getting more pummeled itself with push noise from a boatload of takeis and brands on threads. It doesnt matter if the small...

14 Dec 2023 at 8:53 | Open on hackers.town
Kudra :maybe_verified:

@Roboron @mike @controlfreak I was hoping someone would point this out. As an instance's number of users grows it does bring in more content from other instances, but it's not *all* the content from each instance.

However, if you have users who become viral on a bigger instance, that could be a really big problem, if I understand correctly, that can already be an issue for small instances with celebrities.

14 Dec 2023 at 23:20 | Open on aus.social
Mike McCue

@kudra @Roboron @controlfreak Yes, I think that's correct at the moment. I think there could be ways to setup relays such that bigger instances shouldered more of the burden/cost so that smaller instances didn't have to. Up to now this hasn't been a huge issue but as the number of people with accounts in the Fediverse scales (I think at least 10X growth in 2024 is likely) this will become an important problem to solve in a way that strengthens smaller instances rather than weakening them.

15 Dec 2023 at 0:57 | Open on flipboard.social
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