#Threads gets a lot of blowback for making federation opt-in on their service.
But from an admin perspective, thank God they’re doing that because if 120 million accounts suddenly joined the #Fediverse, this could kill many servers.
Meta might have the resources send messages from that many accounts, but many Fediverse servers don’t have the resources to receive all of them.
This is why resource efficiency is such an important concern for the Fediverse at large. Hence why I’m interested in building a community of #Akkomane enthusiasts.
I think one reason #Tumblr has yet to join the #Fediverse is precisely because they’re worried about the effect all those Tumblr accounts could have on the current Fediverse.
This isn’t a matter of just turning on a switch and – BAM! – welcome to the Fediverse!
It’s something that takes a lot of planning and diligent preparation.
@christophertrottier I've said it already multiple times saucet this idea has been floating around, and Tumblr has an advantage over Threads: every author and blog effectively has its own subdomain.
ActivityPub is a person-to-person protocol, not a server-to-server protocol. You won't get more stuff on your server unless you follow more people.
We are all getting bigger following lists because there are more people to follow, but I don't think it's going to be a flood. Each person only has so many accounts they can follow reasonably. Most of us top out around 1-2 thousand.
Something I have thought about, but it needs to be solved, not ran away from. Can't have a social network with a capacity limit, otherwise, it is a failed system.
@christophertrottier To be pedantic, it's only a problem if gazillions of Threads accounts start following large numbers of Fedi accounts, right? Other than that it just looks like another instance. Or am I missing something?
@christophertrottier You're right that it's an interesting problem. The reason I'm in favor of federating with Threads is that it gives the Fediverse an opportunity to shine a light on the Threads exit door (assuming they really do full federation with account migration).
If for that reason or some other, a huge number of Threadsniks started following many Fedi people, or migrating over, then yeah, that could really strain the Fedi infra. But I think it's a problem we'd like to have?
@timbray I’m also in favour of federating with Threads, and I agree with you.
I guess what I’m getting at is that if the Fediverse does eventually reach billions of people – and why shouldn’t it? – then we definitely need to consider problems of scale.
I have no doubt that folks like you and @evan have the means to address all this. However, for many people starting a server for the first time, this is something that needs further consideration.
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