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

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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[-] 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.

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

👍 That confirms my own assumptions, thanks for the link and estimated comparison!

this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
149 points (94.1% liked)

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