Greetings, self-hosting enthusiasts and welcome to the Selfhosted group on Lemmy! I am Fimeg, your tour guide through the labyrinth of digital change. As you’re likely aware, we’re witnessing a considerable transformation in the landscape of online communities, particularly around Reddit. So let’s indulge our inner tech geeks and dive into the details of this issue, and explore how we, as a self-hosting community, can contribute to the solution.
The crux of the upheaval is a policy change from Reddit that’s putting the existence of beloved third-party apps, like Reddit is Fun, Narwhal, and BaconReader, in jeopardy. Reddit has begun charging exorbitant fees for API usage, so much so that Apollo is facing a monthly charge of $1.7 million. The ramifications of these charges have resulted in an outcry from the Reddit community, leading to a number of subreddits planning to go dark in protest.
These actions have pushed many users to seek out alternative platforms, such as Lemmy, to continue their digital explorations. The migration to Lemmy is especially significant for us self-hosters. Third-party applications have long been a critical part of our Reddit experience, offering unique features and user experiences not available on the official app.
As members of the Selfhosted group on Lemmy, we’re not just bystanders in this shift - we have the knowledge, skills, and power to contribute to the solution. One of the ways we can contribute is by assisting with the archiving efforts currently being organized by r/datahoarder on Reddit. As self-hosting enthusiasts, we understand the value of data preservation and have the technical acumen required to ensure the wealth of information on Reddit is not lost due to these policy changes.
So, while we navigate this new territory on Lemmy, let’s continue to engage in productive discussions, share insights, and help to shape the future of online communities. Your decision to join Lemmy’s Selfhosted group signifies a commitment to maintain the spirit of a free and open internet, a cause that is dear to all of us.
Finally, in line with the spirit of the original Reddit post, if you wish to spend money, consider supporting open-source projects or charities that promote a free and accessible internet.
With that, let’s roll up our digital sleeves and embark on this new journey together. Welcome to the Selfhosted group on Lemmy!
I’m thinking about setting up an instance but am worried about costs - can anyone share any information on how much it has cost them so far? Especially the bigger instances, since usage might spike after the Reddit changes kick in, and I’m worried about suddenly getting a huge bill
It cost me nothing really to add the instance but I’ve yet to add a bunch of people talking and communicating - thus filling my drives… In the past I used the Matrix protocol and while it’s entirely different I think for a moderate community we should be able to last a good year on a TB if we has some reasonable limitations on size.
Any guesses on bandwidth usage? I have gig down but only 40Mb up, worried I’d create a bad experience for users if I started getting any actual traffic. I have tons of storage though.
40mbit upload might be a bit tight in the long run, but enough to start out. There are ways to offload bandwith especially for images via caching so that might help as well. Text only doesn’t need much bandwidth.
Judging from my DO usage network chart, with me subscribed to a ton of communities: minimal. Just a lot of API calls back and forth from federated servers.
Nice, I’ll have to spin one up. Cool domain by the way.
Thanks! It’s my “fun” domain.
But yeah, you shouldn’t have any issues with bandwidth if you don’t have a massive amount of users. The big instances are running into bottlenecks related to CPU/disk speed from what I’ve been seeing vs network speed.
Got it, that makes sense.
Would directing new users to small/self-hosted instances to take (auth/caching…?) load be good, or would it create longer term issues of having potentially unreliable auth front-ends when the bigger guys have better infrastructure?
The bigger instances mostly are fine on the auth side, it’s primarily pictures and some slow SQL stuff being worked on still. So best thing some users can do on smaller instances is be aware that the bigger ones may go up and down a little, so content may come in bursts from the communities on the bigger ones
I world encourage you to get a few other people involved.
If a server ends up hosting the selfhosted community, there will be some costs and responsibility.
Share the responsibility and increase credibility et cetera.