Conversation

Notices

1. Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 11:52:37 UTC Bob Mottram
   The fact that mastodon apparently doesn't scale well could be a feature rather than a bug. You probably don't want thousands of users on a single server, since that brings with it all sorts of problems - social, technical, economic.
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 11:57:28 UTC Bob Mottram

     • My Life Is A Fuck
     @dtluna I expect so. Any idea what database the Pleroma backend uses?
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 14:56:43 UTC Bob Mottram

     • Matthew Graybosch
     @starbreaker well when it gets down to it nothing other than P2P really scales well.
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 15:09:14 UTC Bob Mottram

     • manicphase
     @manicphase and that's something like the FreedomBox idea. You host yourself or a small number of friends and family, and then federate with the rest. It doesn't need to be a massive and expensive server.
     
     I've been in the fediverse for a long time and while vitriol is sometimes a problem spam hasn't been much of a problem so far. Intrinsically there's nothing to stop people from posting ads, it's just that in the fediverse they would be easier to block and there are no algorithmic timelines and bribed posts so far (though that might be coming).
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 15:24:41 UTC Bob Mottram

     • ar.al🌻
     @aral it's a sliding scale, since an instance with one user is quite similar to a P2P system. In that case the admin issues go away and it becomes more a question of having good controls over what you see or who you interact with. I think for the foreseeable future client/server will continue to be the main architecture though and there will be varying levels of admin responsibilities.
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 15:34:28 UTC Bob Mottram

     • ar.al🌻
     @aral and as skeptical of docker as I am in the recent Mastodon case it does look like the availability of a docker container has significantly helped quite a number of instances get up and running within a few days.
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 15:47:32 UTC Bob Mottram

     • Matthew Graybosch
     @starbreaker I see P2P as a two stage thing. There's the software and the infrastructure.
     
     In terms of software there are already things like ZeroMe on ZeroNet, which are mostly distributed with the possible exception of the identity model. Making something something like gnusocial out of IPFS just using files and directories would probably also not be that hard to do as a backend and would scale much better.
     
     Then there's the infrastructure. That's definitely feasible in densely populated urban areas, but the main problem is cost (even though it's fairly small) and just persuading folks to stick router boxes up in suitable places.
     
     Last year I was experimenting with a mesh version of the Freedombone system, and I think a fully P2P mesh based internet is possible and in the longer term the way things are likely to go. https://freedombone.net/mesh.html
   • Bob Mottram (bob@social.freedombone.net)'s status on Monday, 17-Apr-2017 16:17:29 UTC Bob Mottram

     • Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene
     @krainboltgreene someone was saying that it doesn't scale very well on a single server due to the slow ruby implementation