Andreas

Yes, by default files are stored directly on a volume on the disk but it's possible to configure pict-rs to use object storage, although there isn't much documentation for configuring and using it with Lemmy yet. Kbin has support for S3 storage in its environment variables. I'll do some research and see if I can add it to Lemmy.

Imgur was created as an image host for Reddit back when Reddit did not support direct image uploads, so any self-hostable image storage solution including Lemmy's built-in pict-rs will work. Federation of the file host is not necessary as there is no need to mirror the files between instances, they are linked to federated posts and the file can be viewed directly on the uploader's instance. As for the community features of Imgur, the "community" on Imgur is, as one Redditor put it, "the sewer rats who don't realize they're living in the sewer".

Thanks for the information. I set up a Matrix instance with a friend before and noticed it had significantly more resource usage than expected of a little chat client, then someone else explained that Matrix was trying to discover all of the other nodes on the network so I assumed it was true. What causes so many state changes to be generated?

Anyone can scrape data and corporations are already doing it. But data scraping is considered a legal gray zone and companies can be prevented from accessing data that they are not legally authorized to use, which is why companies like OpenAI retrieve their training data from data dumps and don't just run web crawlers across the entire internet. A publicly announced platform with an appropriate clause in its Terms of Service can grant Meta the legal ownership of all data from the fediverse that arrives on their platform.

Matrix's client UX is improving a lot, there is the Cinny client that mirrors Discord's layout perfectly. The issue with Matrix is its protocol, which faces scaling issues because each instance joining the network is supposed to replicate the entire Matrix network, which will make it difficult for small hobbyists to add instances without crumbling under the load when the network gets too big. There is another Discord-like alternative, Revolt which is self-hostable and uses its own protocol but doesn't have federation yet.

Sounds like the problem here is that your colleagues are your only social circle outside of family rather than remote work being isolating. I think it's unhealthy to have work relationships take up a significant part of your social contacts in general, because you'll have a less rational perspective on your job when you associate it with friends. You might be reluctant to leave a job with poor compensation and hours because all of your friends are there, for example. My commute to work and back takes over 2 hours a day and it's much easier to be peer-pressured into working overtime when you can see everyone else doing so. All of this only benefits the employer. I'd rather work remotely and spend the saved time with people I choose to be with.

Meta's main income stream is data mining and they will take advantage of federation to collect data (not metadata, but human-generated content is still very valuable for AI model training) of users on federated instances. Any content that federates over to this instance will be cached on Meta servers where they can do whatever they like with it. There is no legal data protection framework for content retrieved from federated networks and Meta's lawyers will try to argue that federating with this platform counts as giving consent to the platform's TOS. Meta platforms introduce lots of advertising and bots to the network. Don't just ignore this platform, give them the Gab treatment.

Thanks! This makes a lot of sense. I only see this problem with hot ranking so I had a feeling it was related to the database query. I'll avoid using hot ranking until the query is optimized.

That, and for Lemmy specifically, its history of being a tankie forum. Without the Reddit refugee migration, if you joined Lemmy as a single user, you would be alone among communists and eventually get bullied into leaving. Already in 2020-2021, Fediverse users knew about Lemmy, but they avoided promoting it because of its userbase. This Reddit situation provided the push to get many normal users over to Lemmy at once to drown out the communist users.

A lot of VPS providers block port 25 (and other email ports) because they don't want people to set up bot spam mail servers on their services. Could that be the issue?

They're different communities with the same name, because community names don't have to be unique between different instances. I get that subscribing to two different communities with the same theme is annoying when you could save time and subscribe to one, but having backup communities is a blessing when the instance shuts down or mods start power tripping. A "multireddit" feature that can combine multiple communities into one subscription feed would keep subscribing convenient without forcing only one community to exist per topic.

From his pinned post on /r/ApolloApp

Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives?

I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial.

These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous.

I don't think he will. He'll probably avoid investing effort into apps that are reliant on a third-party service now after how he was treated by Reddit.