I set up an instance recently. I found that as soon as a couple of other people joined the instance and started subscribing to groups there was more than enough content coming in.
There are only so many communities to join and once one person joins something the entire server benefits. So it feels much less lonely than a small mastodon instance. No real need for a relay.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the capabilities of relays. The problem I am thinking about is having too many smaller instances subscribed to communities on each of the larger ones, causing a lot of unnecessary traffic. If there is a way to have all those smaller instances subscribe through one or a few relays, that would keep traffic on the bigger instances down and help spread the load.
Oh, yes, the chattiness of the ActivityPub protocol could very well become a problem and some sort of network topology will need to be designed. Without a fediverse-wide governance structure, that could be difficult!
Well actually if the popular communities weren't concentrated on the larger instances, and rather spread out it would be less of a problem I think. But, yes at the peak of things I was averaging around 5 hits a second from lemmy.world alone on incoming federation messages.
I think making a separate run relay isn't the answer. I think perhaps the larger instances running a separate server for federation outgoing messages, and perhaps redirecting incoming federation messages too. So as to separate federation and UI. If they don't already of course. That could go a long way to making it take longer to overwhelm.
You're not misunderstanding. They just solve more than one issue, and create a few too.
That's a personal preference though. You don't have a need for a relay. There are more than a few people who want to run their own instance and at least browse all the things without having to subscribe to them. This is a news aggregator at the core after all.
Well, maybe that is the case. I had an easier time building a feed with mastodon by following hashtags. I have joined about 15 or so communities and the feed still isn't what I want it to be. Is there a way to use hashtags the same way with Lemmy?
I've been pondering trying to make one, but it's not going to be a cake-walk. The tool (that was a script) I wrote ruffled some feathers for it's potential to destroy the lemmyverse. While I don't believe that could happen. I'm still interested in something easier and more integrated.
The theory is simple and I am willing to take a stab at it, but there might be road blocks trying to make or incorporate changes to the actual lemmy code.
Go for it! If you break the lemmyverse with a relay you've just fixed a problem before it was exploited!
There are many existing AP relay projects, all that is needed is Lemmy side support.
Maybe the best would be to target this one: https://git.asonix.dog/asonix/relay
Interested in this as well. Replying in the hope that I'll get a notification if a reply comes in. (Still learning this new strange world)
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