hitagi

Some (maybe most) of these accounts are likely using custom domain linking instead of a server.

No, I don’t think it removes duplicate images.

Right now: 0.3GB per user per month. This number is probably much higher for other instances because I don’t keep copies of federated images anymore and I’ve been compressing images early on.

This doesn’t include bandwidth and backups.

I managed to bring down ani.social’s monthly costs to only ~14 USD when converted (which includes everything except backups). With 165 monthly users, that comes to around ~0.08 USD with a lot of accomodation.

Lemmy is efficient in resources except in storage (database and images) which grows infinitely. Unless you’re purging older posts and images, it keeps growing (very slowly).

I made it a small badge so people wouldn’t have to feel obligated to donate. But yes, the entire instance has been community funded already thanks to generous one-time and monthly donations!

Oops, I misunderstood how it works. You can add subdomains as your handle.

I thought subdomains were people using PDS. So I don’t know anyone running a PDS. I might try running one just to see what it’s like and actually learn the network.

But here’s an example of @user.domain.com: https://bsky.app/profile/tomoshika.voms.net

I don’t think they’re using a PDS though. In fact, it’s really hard to tell who’s using a PDS or not. I’m not sure what the effect of this is in community-building and I wonder if control over the network is really decentralized. This is really… confusing.

Anyway, the PDS is a lot more complicated than I thought: https://docs.bsky.app/docs/category/advanced-guides

The users with PDS use something like @user.domain.com. Users with just @domain.com are under Bluesky IIRC.

People have suggested making a portal/quiz for instance signups, but that adds to the barrier. There are also problems like how in-depth and inclusive it should be. It reminds me of Linux distro pickers that often suggest weird niche distros.

There are already big/default instances in the Fediverse though but there are people who actively discourage this. Maybe Mastodon just had a bad start and Bluesky learned from that. I wonder if Bluesky’s PDS will be like Fediverse instances though. Many Fediverse instances are built around shared interests but the PDS just looks like a glorified handle.

Personally, I think the Fediverse discourse should shift to designing social media with decentralization in mind rather than mimicking mainstream social media with a “decentralized twist”. I don’t think the Fediverse will ever be as big as Twitter, but it doesn’t have to be. It just needs to be sustainable enough to keep new conversations going.

Doesn’t answer the question but maybe it’s worth sharing anyway.