this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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The environmental footprint of social media hosting: What about Lemmy and the like? (www.easst.net)
submitted 1 year 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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[–] dawnnafus@mastodon.social 6 points 1 year ago

@okasen @stefanlaser you are right to be skeptical about AWS https://www.fastcompany.com/90879223/amazon-claims-to-champion-clean-energy-so-why-did-it-just-help-kill-an-emissions-bill-in-oregon.

FWIW, I think you are pointing to a larger problem-- like, it's not a coincidence that the harder the sales pitch of the cloud, the more obscure such numbers become.

To take a car analogy--there's a reason most Americans have an intuition for what miles per gallon *feels* like, but wouldn't know where to start with the equivalent for EVs.