Aral Balkan, "Is the fediverse about to get Fryed? (Or, “Why every toot is also a potential denial of service attack”)" https://ar.al/2022/11/09/is-the-fediverse-about-to-get-fryed-or-why-every-toot-is-also-a-potential-denial-of-service-attack/

A wonderful blogpost explaining why mass and scale are a danger to the #fediverse. Thanks @aral for unearthing this problem for the #Fediverse (not just the silo-esk Mastodon-network).

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« [O]n the fediverse, I find myself in a somewhat unique situation where:

1. I have my own personal Mastodon instance, just for me.4
2. I’m followed by quite a number of people. Over 22,000, to be exact.
3. I follow a lot of people and I genuinely enjoy having conversations with them. [...]

Unfortunately, the combination of these three factors creates a perfect storm which means that now, every time I post something that gets lots of engagement, I essentially end up carrying out a denial of service attack on myself. [...]

So, what’s the solution?

Well, there’s only one thing you can do when you find yourself in such a pickle: scale up your Mastodon instance. The problem with that? It starts getting expensive. »

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Yes, scale the instance and have it get more expensive is one problem.

But the other is that by doing so you either oust smaller instances or force them to scale up as well to stay visible and "see" enough accounts.

#fediverse #federation !gnusocial !fnetworks