Is there any benefit to host my own instance?

  • Korgen@lemmy.korgen.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I run my own instance, the benefit is privacy and reliability. Everything is controlled on your own server. You also aren’t reliant on someone else running an instance that could go down at any time, either permanently or an outage. Been a problem with Lemmy.ml recently.

    • StrangeWorrier@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You also aren’t reliant on someone else running an instance that could go down at any time, either permanently or an outage.

      You have to worry about it yourself though.

      • Muddybulldog@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        A balancing act for sure. I’m torn on the topic. With some much excitement right now but so little history there’s a lot of uncertainty where to “plant your flag”. Part of me wants to setup my own instance simply so I maintain control of my identity should .world suddenly disappear. On the other hand now I have the responsibility of making sure I don’t make myself disappear. The mental debate will continue.

        • IowaMan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think for now it’s so early it doesn’t matter all that much. Just have fun! You can make multiple accounts so why not

      • CaptainApathetic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yea but if you host with a major cloud server provider you’re basically having 100% uptime because they very very rarely go down and so the only issues would be stuff you’d have to deal with.

    • Kyoyeou (Ki jəʊ juː)@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I was asking myself a question, if you comment like you did here Is it saved in the server on which the original post is, or is it saved on your server?

      • SmugBedBug@lemmy.iswhereits.at
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        1 year ago

        Kind of both. His server has a mirror of the community. When he comments it gets saved on his server and the his server communicates with the original server. In turn the original server also communicates his comment with other federated servers.

        • pzza@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If data is migrated from server to server, as the community grows in size, the data to be maintained on each server also grows in size? Also i’ve seen some servers allow the creation of new users/communities, but some don’t… whats the point of that if the data is just replicated anyway?

          • jcg@halubilo.social
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            1 year ago

            Yes that’s right, an instance is constantly accumulating data over time, however instances that aren’t the origin instance have the option of going back and deleting old posts (manually in the DB) but then their users wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. I do get the concern though, if things really start to pickup and we get insane volume, I’m afraid even my instance wouldn’t be able to pick up. I’d have to unsubscribe from everything. On the other hand, I think people will come up with solutions as things scale. There’s a lot of unknowns right now, too many to build a solution. Just take a look at mastodon and how its model has changed over time.

        • pzza@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If data is migrated from server to server, as the community grows in size, the data to be maintained on each server also grows in size? Also i’ve seen some servers allow the creation of new users/communities, but some don’t… whats the point of that if the data is just replicated anyway?

      • Lucas@lemmy.lucaslower.com
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        1 year ago

        I believe it is saved first on the instance you’re signed up for, then gets pushed around the network using the Activity pub protocol. So it eventually ends up being stored across many instances of it has far enough reach.

    • jason@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      How is your RAM/storage usage? I’m interested in setting up my own instance (no communities, just a username that will always be here) but don’t want to upgrade my VPS again. I already had to do that spinning up a Mastodon server.

        • jason@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          haha better than the 12GB and rising of my single-user Mastodon instance. And this is with deleting my media cache every night.

        • Jamoke@lemmy.themainframe.org
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          1 year ago

          The pictures folder on my instance is at 1.3GB after two days. It’s just me and my friend. About how many communities are you subscribed to?

        • gabe565@lemmy.cook.gg
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          1 year ago

          Up to 400MB after two days here. I took a look at the code and it looks like Lemmy keeps all ActivityPub JSON for 6 months. It would be nice if it was possible to shorten that.

          I’m still happy that I’m hosting my own instance, but I hope this thing doesn’t get too big!

          • livingcoder@lemmy.austinwadeheller.com
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            1 year ago

            So long as you can run Docker, I would think that you could setup an instance. You just need to make sure that the image you use for lemmy and lemmy-ui are compatible with your platform. I had to alter the provided docker-compose.yml file to use arm64 versions for my RaspberryPi.

            I mentioned the total disk usage for the sake of setting up a pi. I don’t know what the space requirements are for lemmy separate from the bulkiness of an Ubuntu 22.04 install.