Contributing distributed resources to existing instances is an interesting concept… I suppose it could be setup like traditional load balancing in a tradition web application environment.

I am absolutely in love with the federated aspect of all of this though, and contributing resources that way. However, I fear that it might limit the size of any one community or instance to a point that it will never be exactly like reddit, in terms of huge monolithic communities for certain hobbies, etc. Which whether that’s good or bad is another discussion.

Allowing the contribution of resources to existing instances could be a political/social/interpersonal nightmare too though, where fighting and threats of removing resources could be used as influence… which would drive people into the existing federated system we already have. So IDK. its an interesting discussion but I don’t know if its the greatest idea yet or not.

For example what if I have a ton of money and am able to contribute more server resources to kbin.social than even kbin.social (or anyone else) can manage… I now basically own and control the platform, and could pull the rug out from underneath it if I don’t like something thats happening…

The only “resource” we can contribute to existing instances is really just money. And maybe some volunteer technical support. Or… start our own separate instance.

I think I’ve managed to debate myself out of thinking what you’re thinking is a good idea though…

Another example about why this is an interesting debate and question though: There are currently multiple “wallstreetbets” wanabees… Its very fragmented. Nobody knows where to go. If there was an easy way through the interface to create my own “combined communities community” (combining multiple copy-cat communities across multiple instance), so I can see every post from everyone, like it was all one place. There is absolutely sort of ways to do that now, but it needs to become easier and more streamlined. That would still mean the communities are fragmented, owned, and moderated by different people. But if one goes off the rails I can just remove it from my master “wallstreetbets monolith” list. But at least that way I can view it as one single “resource” and one single community, despite being separate instances and servers.

Let me know if you find a way to do this. It’s a super cool concept and I would love to contribute. This seems like the only way to sustainably run big instances.