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Call to Action: Fediverse Media Server (shlee.fedipress.au)
submitted 5 months ago by mox@lemmy.sdf.org to c/programming@programming.dev
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[-] solrize@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

Can someone explain what this is for? I'm basically unfamiliar with the non Lemmy parts of the fediverse. I had thought Mastodon was like Twitter so I don't understand what a federated media server is supposed to do. It just sounds destined to turn into free pr0n hosting and then get shut down. But who knows.

[-] Kissaki@programming.dev 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Mastodon is a Fediverse platform. Lemmy is too. Anyone can host their own Mastodon and Lemmy instances.

When a user uploads an image or video on Mastodon instance 1, and a user of Mastodon instance 2 is following them, that image or video is copied over to Mastodon instance 2 - because that's where that user resides.

This means content gets replicated and duplicated across every shared-network instance. Resulting in resilience, but also ~~exponential~~, excessive storage needs.

OP is suggesting that media files should be shared across platform instances so that they don't get duplicated many times. This would significantly reduce storage and bandwidth needs and use for the platform instances themselves, offloading and centralizing media file concerns.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

When a user uploads an image or video on Mastodon instance 1, and a user of Mastodon instance 2 is following them, that image or video is copied over to Mastodon instance 2 - because that’s where that user resides.

The same thing happens with text posts, right? I don't see an exponential expansion, just linear in the number of nodes. It sounds like the decentralized way to do things. Hmm. Anyway, thanks for the explanation. It saves some storage but doesn't save bandwidth, it sounds like. Rather, the bandwidth requirement gets concentrated at the shared server.

[-] Kissaki@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Depends on the implementation. OP talked about potential of a CDN serving the shared resources. The instance servers wouldn't have to proxy the content. Which would allow caching and not duplicating content and transmission through multiple endpoints.

Yeah, I guess it's linear rather than exponential in growth. From an instance hoster point of view, it just never ends though, and not very predictable.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago

Something tells me there would be agreements between the instance provider and a media hosting provider and as such the media hosting provider would probably have some disclaimers about what they're willing to host (war porn, regular porn, what have you). The two host providers would have to make sure everything they want to provide and everything they don't want to host agree. I mean, there's already lemmynsfw, so free porn hosting is already happening.

I honestly think the whole media hosting aspect of federation is dangerously flawed as long as instance hosts are still paying for storage and bandwidth, and I'm not sure how to fix it. It will cripple small instances with popular media if they host directly, but not hosting directly has a possibly lesser impact on all instance providers, with a higher aggregate impact. Tough choice. I don't know enough about CDNs to say if that can solve the problem, depending on how media is federated.

This is going to need to be resolved if federation is going to grow to the next level. I hope someone finds an answer that works well enough for everybody, even the porn users and providers.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

CDN's are quite expensive compared to budget VPS and e.g. Hetzner storage cloud. Their basic purpose is to give quick delivery to regions far from the server, not really to save cost. I don't know the story with lemmynsfw. It's basically an onlyfans marketing platform right? Maybe they have some donation scheme in place behind the scenes. Anyway free porn hosting isn't so much an issue per se (imgur, tumblr, etc are also that,) but for those who don't want to host porn, it likely creates nonstop workload to clean it up.

Also, besides porn, it's sad that this beautiful fediverse that might have become an alternative place for actual humans to interact, turns into another marketing space for corporate media. I'd like to put up a text only server. I don't know if that's really doable with current fediverse types. But why try to recreate reddit and imgur and maybe youtube? Those all already exist.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago

People have been sending NSFW pictures one way or another probably since people started making pictures. We have images scratched into the walls in Pompeii. There are certainly issues of consent, abuse, and advertising that need to be addressed, but demonizing pictures of naked people is also a problem.

As for all those alternatives you mention, the vast majority of fediverse applications/instances seem to be "like [insert commercial entity], but hosted by individuals/the community? How many people would be on Lemmy if Reddit was offering them what they wanted? When you have control or alternatives the odds of finding what you like improve. And some of those things people will want to share will be images, videos, and yes, even porn. But even without porn, if the service isn't meeting people's needs, which I agree includes no or fewer ads, then it simply won't survive.

[-] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

Isn't this what IPFS is perfect for? Long term distributed storage?

[-] manicdave@feddit.uk 1 points 5 months ago

I think something like peertube would be a good solution for media, but there's obstacles to getting it deployed in terms of adoption.

The player is quite mature and does everything you could want. For servers it saves resources by being peer to peer using webRTC. For clients it handles graceful degradation and redundancy.

A way it could be implemented for other drivers servers could go like this...

I upload a video to Lemmy. My Lemmy instance forwards that video to peertube. Peertube processes the video and releases it as unlisted. Peertube sends the URL back to my Lemmy instance. Lemmy publishes my post with the peertube player iframe as a video.

The issues with this are getting app developers and instance owners to adopt the changes and getting users to understand the implications of the P2P aspect.

this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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