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The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like? (www.easst.net)

submitted 2 years ago by stefanlaser to c/solarpunk

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Social media platforms need a lot of computing and storage power provided by energy-hungry data centres that constantly have to upgrade their hardware, spitting out vast amounts of e-waste. This is particularly true of commercial platforms with their ML-driven ad systems. The fall of Twitter and Reddit would be beneficial in that regard.

But what about Fediverse systems? The link discusses Mastodon, but that's only one example. Would it be possible to host Lemmy instances in a sustainable way? With solar power? And what would it imply, materially and socially?

I have resources like the Low-Tech Magazine in mind, which uses solar power to host a website. The downtime is part of the adventure. Or we'd have to deploy a solar protocol to use the earth's rotation creatively and for cooperation.

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[–] stefanlaser 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Perhaps for medium- to large-size solutions, for example: bundling multiple fediverse instances in one cooperative data centre. Virtuality allows for efficiently allocating resources where they are needed the most.

*Edit: Turns out I almost joined that particular instance. Awesome name, too. But Canada is quite far away from my home. And home-y it shall be.