Running a full-network Bluesky relay costs less ($19) than my beefy but ~single user Mastodon hosted instance ($24).
People underestimate how much data optimized software can move through efficient protocols on modern non-cloud hardware.
whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2…
A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month | bryan newbold
This is an update to a Summer 2024 blog post. At the time, atproto relays required a cache of the full network on local disk to validate data structures. With the Sync v1.1 updates, relays don't need all that disk I/O.whtwnd.com
Cybersecurity & cyberwarfare reshared this.
Filippo Valsorda
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • • •The relay is the supposedly centralized part of Bluesky because “too big” to run! $19/month!
The bsky.app AppView is bigger but every Mastodon instance is an AppView (and PDS), and if you were ok with Mastodon-style partial views of the network, AppViews would be cheap too.
Andrew Kelley
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • • •Arch
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • • •Varbin ​
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • • •I am curious how Bluesky's approach to development will turn out.
Some else described it as “Bluesky started as a (well-designed) centralized network, and each component is gradually decentralized”.
Maybe this will lead to a better software in the end, and I hope the goal of a truly decentralized social network will be reached ultimately.
Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋
in reply to Varbin ​ • • •Cybersecurity & cyberwarfare
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • •ex_06 likes this.
Filippo Valsorda
in reply to Cybersecurity & cyberwarfare • • •Cybersecurity & cyberwarfare likes this.
Cybersecurity & cyberwarfare reshared this.
Cybersecurity & cyberwarfare
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • •@Filippo Valsorda Let's say that what impacts the performance of an instance is the combination of two aspects:
1) the total number of users of other instances followed by the users of your instance
2) the number of instances to which the followed users belong
The number of contents created, on the other hand, impacts much less.
For this reason, an instance with a single user who follows tens of thousands of users who are on hundreds of different instances, fundamentally suffers from the same problems as an instance with 100-1000 users.
This is also one of the reasons why, proportionally, larger instances (over 10,000 active users) suffer less than small ones: in fact, large instances are more self-referential (users of the same instance follow each other more) and count on greater funding; in small instances, on the other hand, users must mainly follow users of other instances and donations are obviously less.
The fact remains that the costs are generally low when compared to Bluesky or even premium accounts of any commercial social network: after all, the Fediverse, unlike Bluesky or a commercial social network, allows you to have a self-managed and virtually independent server.
Anders Eknert
in reply to Filippo Valsorda • • •