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The Slow Fedi Movement: Toward a Green, Independent, and Equitable Fediverse (thedabbler.patatas.ca)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by smallpatatas@lemm.ee to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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The Fediverse - especially the microblogging side of it - has deep issues when it comes to environmental sustainability.

And the high resource requirements, which result from an incredible level of redundancy, aren't just bad environmentally: they make running a server more costly, and increase our reliance on Big Tech's infrastructure.

I wrote about all this, along with some suggestions for how we can improve things somewhat.

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[-] halm@leminal.space 6 points 6 months ago

Fair point and while I don't want to sidetrack from it — how much is the Fediverse's energy usage compared to those of AI services or cryptocurrency farms?

I'm all for scaling down our resource consumption and finding environmentally friendly alternatives, but it has to be across the board. It's no use that a small segment minimise their expenditure if the biggest culprits continue and expand their exploitative behaviour.

[-] victorz@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

How about we do it because it makes us feel good, morally? How about we do it because we want to set a good example?

This whole "I won't change until those who are worse than I am change," is so juvenile to me.

[-] halm@leminal.space 3 points 6 months ago

No, I agree. It's not about waiting out the bigger players. It's making sure that everybody does their part!

The fediverse has its footprint for sure and it's great that we pull together to minimise that. I just want to put it in perspective at the same time and point out that federated services aren't the only, or even biggest offenders here.

Many of the hotshot technologies — cryptocurrencies a few years back, this season it's "AI" — get launched without a thought of their environmental impacts, at a time where basically every MWh counts. I want to help with my fedi usage, but I also want that to be reflected in idiots' bitcoin mining or GPT generated "content".

There has to be proportional balance.

[-] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Given all of that, I'd say it's a good thing to get active and accuse these big environmental crooks, while at the same time being perfect examples of how to minimize our own footprint. Nobody will listen to accusations from someone who isn't perfectly innocent themselves.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 5 points 6 months ago

how much is the Fediverse’s energy usage compared to those of AI services or cryptocurrency farms?

Practically 0.

[-] halm@leminal.space 2 points 6 months ago

That's my intuition too. Would like to see sources to back it up though.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Well this site says that the bitcoin network uses at least 91 TWh annually.

According to fediverse.observer, there's roughly 21000 Fediverse servers online.

Let's just assume that a server on the Fediverse uses 500W. That's quite a high estimate btw, but we can overestimate, it's fine.

That gives roughly 0.09 TWh annually, or about 0.1% of the bitcoin network. And remember that's an overestimate and remember that that only considers bitcoin and no other cryptocurrencies.