"In 2024, it cost $N to run a Mastodon instance with ~1000 active users for a year.

Amber

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Emelia 👸🏻

@puppygirlhornypost2 @risottobias @mekkaokereke @esk @dma yeah, reads and deletes can be expensive

{Insert Pasta Pun}

@thisismissem @puppygirlhornypost2 @mekkaokereke @esk @dma wasabi charges for not keeping an object to 90 days, so there's also that.

Esk 🐌⚡💜

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke @dma yup, we could calc the raw infra costs, will do latest tonight, but your range sounds about right.

i'm not aware of anything that would have magically dropped the infra costs (the x, y, nor z). maybe the libvips support reduced cpu somewhat.

mekka has a super key point - the people costs are all $0 in that figure, though, bc it's volunteer. personally, i'm happy to do it as a way of giving back, but reality is, mastodon is hard to make viable if you actually pay people.

Emelia 👸🏻

@esk @mekkaokereke libvips reduces cpu required for conversion, however, does allow for some larger attachments

Jenniferplusplus

@mekkaokereke X is an activity transfer relay. Similar to mail transfer relays, in SMTP.

Y is a shared media storage pool.

Z is automated spam filtering.

:PUA: Shlee fucked around and

@jenniferplusplus @mekkaokereke I want to believe.

Y+: I've been tooting this horn for too long so I've kind of given up, but I think it's one of the highest priorities to resolve for admins as a whole... not very high for devs it seems tho so who knows.

Z+: akismet for AP (shared threat data).. SEO spam account has a common username/email/ip/URLs in profile/posts

A SEO spammer shoudn't be able to move from instance to instance... share that data around

Eashwar

@mekkaokereke I feel like pooling storage could be very useful since a lot of servers are storing copies of the same media (see jortage.com). Media storage, CDN, and transfer bandwidth make up a huge amount of cost in running servers.

Emelia 👸🏻

@e_nomem @mekkaokereke @esk could be interesting to experiment with operating something like jortage? Would probably need a webhook/events queue to setup tasks for checking contents uploaded (as to limit liability)

Les Orchard

@mekkaokereke Along with pooling storage, it'd probably make folks on the rest of the web happy if mastodon instances pooled opengraph / preview card fetches. Maybe through shared caching proxies or protocol tweaks. Anything to cut down the thundering herd every time a link is shared.

Esk 🐌⚡💜

@thisismissem ah so prob a wash, eh?

:PUA: Shlee fucked around and

@mekkaokereke reading these posts.. I hope 2025 is the year of shared services on the fediverse.

shared community / co-operation services are not centralisation you zealots. Don't @ me.

{Insert Pasta Pun}

@shlee @mekkaokereke plus it could be "requires manual approval from somebody on your server"

like... server ABC limited domain 1. your server mods get notified and they can either agree or disagree.

Cassandrich

@craignicol @mekkaokereke No one is going to use an instance that abdicates moderation in favor of AI shit. Pattern recognition that cannot see and understand outside context cannot accurately moderate.

Cassandrich

@dave @mekkaokereke Refusing to cache local copies of large media. Downsampling it all to reasonable size. That's literally all there is too it. Bonus: you don't blow your users' mobile data quotas.

Jenniferplusplus

@mekkaokereke Actually, I should note that while I think it's important to cut the cost of running fediverse servers, there's only so much savings to be had.

I think it's more important to create ways for servers to generate revenue and be financially self-sufficient. And to do so without selling ads, because the incentive structures that advertising creates are anathema to the aspects of this place that are actually good.

I'm hoping it can be done with paid features.

Parsnicketty

@mekkaokereke @gkrnours that’s an interesting idea.

What if such a team triaged content that everyone* (*who I want to talk to) agrees is unacceptable like death threats, hate speech, CSAM, and then referred more nuanced problems to instance-specific mods?

There needs to be a way for people to learn moderating, do it for awhile, and then rotate out before they’re scarred for life.

craignicol

@dalias @mekkaokereke people accept instances with barely any moderation (well, a lot of instances defederate them, but they remain popular) and I'm sure threads will stay. It's not something I'll be comfortable with, but it's a trade-off people who don't feel threatened here might accept.