@volkris @lps @errhead @Revertron @kzimmermann What you're saying is not true. Smaller instances don't consume "exponentially more resources". ActivityPub is very easy on resources and servers can run almost anywhere (unless you use some really inefficient bloatware)

@silverpill
What about video-servers, again?
Who is willing to pay for big storage and data transfers?

Is it possible to maintain something like this on donations?

@volkris @lps @errhead @kzimmermann

@Revertron @volkris @lps @errhead @kzimmermann Resource-intensive applications should offload expensive stuff to clients. Video servers should make use of torrents or IPFS for example.

Donation model is often unsustainable, but crowdsourcing is known to work.

@silverpill
> Resource-intensive applications should offload expensive stuff to clients.

Yep, but there is no viable technology for that right now.
In my opinion it would be custom torrent-client with video-player, that would maintain some size-bound storage.

@volkris @lps @errhead @kzimmermann

@Revertron @volkris @lps @errhead @kzimmermann Desktop PeerTube client with integrated torrents is possible. All the necessary pieces already exist, someone just needs to combine them.

Web clients are harder, I agree.

@Revertron @silverpill @volkris @errhead @kzimmermann personal/small community servers can be run on minimal hardware like a raspberry pi and don't even need to be on a VPS which greatly reduces cost.

Or, if it is hosted with such a service, cheap block storage is an option.

See https://communitymedia.video/ $15/yr

@lps
I know that #PeerTube doesn't demand much, I host it on my J4105 Celeron in KVM...

Good example with $15/year.

@silverpill @volkris @errhead @kzimmermann

@Revertron @silverpill @volkris @lps @kzimmermann

PeerTube is designed to minimize bandwidth costs in several ways, and storage isn't that expensive these days.

For a single creator instance they can get a VPS with unmetered bandwidth and terabyte of storage for $10 a month, less for creators with more modest video catalogs.

Whether they can get enough donations would be entirely dependant on how popular their content is with people willing to donate.

@errhead
Creators often don't know anything about VPSes, linux, hosting and such.
And they go to most popular hosting for audience.
How can we advertise any PeerTube instance to such creators?

And users will not search for such creators in the wild. Thousands of servers are not searchable.

@silverpill @volkris @lps @kzimmermann

@Revertron @errhead @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann The discoverability problem is being addressed by #peertube devs in future versions, they realize this is a problem.

They will also be hosting a "flagship" instance by the end of 2024 I believe.

In this way it will have a similar effect than was the case with #mastodon ... people initially signup using the easy on ramp approach, but as they become familiar with it, they graduate to these alternative solutions.

This is a WIP of course

@Revertron @errhead @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann This is a great article by #framasoft that explains their goals in detail

https://framablog.org/2023/11/14/lets-regain-ground-on-the-toxic-web-framasofts-2023-report/

@lps
Good to know. But this "flagship" instance will demand hell of storage, I think for all those flatearthers, anti-vaxers and such...

@errhead @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann

@Revertron @errhead @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann I suspect this will be heavy moderated/curated to avoid that ... and in addition I personally would prefer the non-federated approach similar to what #tilvids does.

It still allows follows and #activitypub integration etc, but you don't get a dirty front page from all the unknown instances.

So instead of blocking servers, it's better to have a web of trust to build a network. This doesn't stop anyone from following whomever they want.

@lps @Revertron @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann

The dirty front page problem is caused by checking the 'automatically follow back' and not having any moderators. Having a moderation team should resolve most of that even with a fairly promiscuous federation policy.

The anti-vaxxers and flat earthers will be off in their own corner of the federation. Hopefully the flagship instance will be user oriented, not creator oriented.

@errhead @Revertron @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann I've always thought it would be a good idea to have an instance for viewers only, it hosts no videos, but simply acts as a place that users can follow, subscribe, comment etc.

I would assume, that just like any social media, there is typically a very small number of "creators" or "publishers" and the majority are only following content.

In this case, it takes next to no resources.

@lps @Revertron @silverpill @volkris @kzimmermann

>And users will not search for such creators in the wild. Thousands of servers are not searchable.

1000+ PeerTube instances are already searchable at https://sepiasearch.org/

Servers don't stand alone, they federate, which shares content and can share bandwidth.

>Creators often don't know anything about VPSes, linux, hosting and such.

They can start out on someone else's server, account migration is one of the things on the TODO list

@volkris @lps @errhead @Revertron @kzimmermann

Yes, AP is very easy on resources. I've built a full-featured AP server from scratch so I know how the protocol works and how it behaves under different conditions.

In AP world you only receive stuff you care about, so most of the time server is just waiting for something to land into inbox, or for outgoing request to complete. There's nothing else to do

>so many instance operators experiencing meltdowns and surprise hosting costs when the resources exploded far higher than they expected

Tell them to use better software.

so many instance operators experiencing meltdowns and surprise hosting costs when the resources exploded far higher than they expected Tell them to use better software.

Commending and adding to this: I’ve also written an ActivityPub server project that’s running in production now, which was originally intended for a niche purpose (but may likely be applicable in much broader scope) where: majority of server activity is essentially just static file hosting. It’s just legitimately Apache/nginx serving up flat HTML and JSON files, as requested, while the fedi software generates those files as new posts are made.

Outward delivery could be moved to a different server entirely that doesn’t even have to be always-online, inward delivery can also be on a separate server and subdomain entirely (and the inbox is the only public/federation-facing that even needs to run any dynamic code). ActivityPub was much intentionally meant to allow simple minimalistic implementations, per IndieWeb influence/inspirations, it wasn’t required that you’d have to install some +1GB filesize suite of software or anything.

The reason there’s extraordinary hosting costs is because of people using grossly-overarchitected or grossly bloated software projects, and are greatly overcomplicating the problem. In my dev lab, apparently a production Mastodon installation and it’s dependencies takes 2.5GB for Ruby, it’s libraries/dependencies, and Mastodon and it’s dependencies. That’s far worse than even majority of Electron-packaged software. Meanwhile I have something in just ~3.5k lines of PHP, that also just lets a webserver be a webserver, and it’s federating just fine and handling massive storms of queries just fine on a $10/month VPS. It’s also of course worth mentioning: all the other options out there that aren’t Mastodon, that also scale far better, but everyone acts so anemic to them, as if Mastodon “is the only way” as some weird ego thing.