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In terms of an optimal load spread, it's best if the lemmiverse is split into multiple equally sized instances. If you use an instance just for yourself, it doesn't actually decrease the load on the main servers in any way. The only thing you get is a guarantee that your instance won't suddenly go down.
Suddenly going down seems to be a constant in my self hosted services though...
ayo gurl lemme go down on your stack
Bow chicka bow wow
If you use an instance just for yourself, it doesn’t actually decrease the load on the main servers in any way.
That's not completely true. Yeah, it still loads another server a bit, but the server-to-server federation traffic is much more lightweight than the client-to-server traffic that would be involved with you having an account on that server and accessing it that way.
But yeah, multiple, equally-sized communities on different instances is the ideal situation. The only sticky part right now is FOMO because you'd have to constantly watch for new SelfHosted communities and join them. Hopefully some frontend tools come along soon to make joining/managing multiple communities like that more streamlined.
Yes, ideally you‘d want to have a few large communties on each instance and not all topics with a single userbase on one. This not only decreases the load but also prevents scenarios in which a single admin starts to capsule their instance with a large userbase away from the federation.
I wanna self-host my own instance so I have more control over my data.
I'm going to self host my own instance so I can have a cool username
What kind of "control" do you mean? Your posts/comments get replicated across all the other instances. You can't really "guarantee" a delete, since the other instances might just ignore your request for delete.
By control, I mean I can back up my data and ensure my comments, subscribed communities, messages, etc are all available to me no matter what, I don't have to rely on some external third-party managing it for me.
You also should be concerned about other people's data on your instance tho
My instance will be for me only, I will be the only person on it and it will be closed for registrations. I won't be responsible for anyone else's data on my instance, nothing for me to be concerned about.
I'm not really sure about that. I'm not saying it as an expert or anything, but that's a discussion I saw around here the other day.
Basically, once you federate and copy the content to your instance, it is in your server and you are responsible for it.
I'll agree with a few things, tho:
It barely happens today, on centralized platforms. They're hardly obliged to remove content because some judge says so (it does happen, tho, at least in my country)
I'd imagine it would be a bit of a grey area legally, right now. We would need legislation regarding the fediverse. Imagine someone posts child porn in an instance yours is federated to. Your instance copies the content. You notice and defederated the whole instance, but don't remove the content. The dude is banned by his home instance and his post is removed. But his copy still exists in yours, since you defederated before his ban and content removal.
Just saying that selfhosting brings a lot of things that need to come to your attention.
Does Lemmy automatically grab all content from all federated servers, or does it only grab the content from communities you (and any other users on the instance) are subscribed to/are actively being visited?
I'm not so sure it does copy all content in the background.
Yeah, it's only communities that people on your instance search for/subscribe to afaik. So if you're the only one on your instance then you have control over that.
Further to that it's only the post objects (and comments, etc.) that is replicated all pics and videos are just URLs. even when you upload a picture with the post, that's just uploaded to the instance and the link to it is the link of the post, even on other instances the images are fetched from the original source from the client side. I do believe each instance does local thumbnaling.
Yes, but we're currently evolving into a situation where everything is centralized around Lemmy.world
Also the assurance that your home instance won't be suddenly federated from one of the major ones
As long as you don't let your instance become bot/nazi/tanky swarm, you are green..