Recently, I was chatting with a friend, and we were talking about ‘de-Googling’, federated networks and self-hosted services. As I was listing the benefits and my largely positive experience with them (the Fediverse for the most part), my friend pointed out that it isn’t an environmentally friendly solution, nor is it optimised for the long term. He told me that it requires more machines that consume more energy than a single large one, as these machines aren’t specialised for hosting services. What’s your view on the argument that ‘several small machines that consume more energy are less optimised and eco-friendly than a single large one built and designed for that purpose’? I realise that the large machine goes hand in hand with techno-fascists and that they are the real problem, but what if we were to look at this from a purely technical, forward-looking perspective on a clean future? How would you respond to this ?
Thanks for these insights! Very very interesting.
As I’m keen to self-host as soon as I can afford it, I’ll bear this in mind. The immediate conclusion, in any case, is that large-scale infrastructure consumes far more energy than self-hosting ever could, and this is down to all the terrible choices they’ve made that led us to abandon them.
As for the long term, having read your replies, I find it interesting to think that this minor drawback can be resolved or managed through green energy decisions and simply better management of needs. I was reading the article posted earlier on ‘The small tech neighbourhood’ and I can see that all of this is, on the contrary, very proactive and sustainable.
Thanks very much – all this information is really useful (and should be widely shared, for all beginners like me or potential future beginners like my friend) !
Honestly, It’s sometimes hard to have a constructed point of view to encourage the federated way when the big corps have had so much power on our reflections… Like I know I’m fighting against this or that but the reasons why are somehow blurred, and even if my senses tell me something is wrong, i still have to search and ask questions to get words to support my ideas. The words don’t come naturally, and it’s frustrating when the opposite message is constantly being hammered home everywhere