Your instance will only clone new content after you’ve federated with a community. And it’s per community, not per instance.
It will also be generating thumbnails for websites that are linked, and a good chunk of the data requirement goes here.
I can tell you that, on average, my instance consumes about 700MB per day. I could cut that down if I federated with less communities, and I could get it down to 400-500MB per day (probably less) if I blocked my instance from generating thumbnails.
It’s not a lot, but over time it will add up. My instance is pretty new, and I have no idea what pruning options are available yet. I’ve got over a month before I have to worry about storage space at the rate I’m using it.
As for system requirements, as long as you’re not supporting users besides yourself, Lemmy will pretty much run on a potato.
TL;DR
400-700MB new data per day depending on your usage habits
Whatever you want to run it on will probably be fine
EDIT: Turns out ~90% of my Lemmy data is just for debugging and not needed:
That’s it, I think some political people need their own potato! Put them on an island and the only contact they have is liking their own comments and posts…
Federation is done per community?! Ok, this creates more questions:
Then why are instances defederating whole instances if they’re unhappy with the content of specific communities?
And more on topic: What about new communities? Do you need to manually federate with need communities on an instance? This seems like a hassle… How does e.g. lemmy-world do it?
Then why are instances defederating whole instances if they’re unhappy with the content of specific communities?
Because on a public instance with many users, any single user can put the URL to a community in the search bar and start the federation. Then it will start showing up on that instance’s “All” tab. If I go to lemmy.world right now and use their search bar to search for someweird.instance/c/among_us_porn, everyone will see those posts on “All.” Based on the name, most people probably don’t want to see that, so they’d be tempted to defederate.
Also, accounts belonging to users on other instances can comment on any public post on any instance, provided they haven’t been defederated. So defederation targets belligerent user accounts too.
What about new communities? Do you need to manually federate with need communities on an instance? This seems like a hassle… How does e.g. lemmy-world do it?
If you’re running a fresh new instance for yourself - yes. Larger instances like lemmy.world don’t have this problem because it only takes one person to start federation. If that one person starts it, every other user will just see it as another community and it will be pretty convenient.
Federation isn’t that complicated though. You just pop the link to the community in your search bar and you’re done.
Your instance will only clone new content after you’ve federated with a community. And it’s per community, not per instance.
It will also be generating thumbnails for websites that are linked, and a good chunk of the data requirement goes here.
I can tell you that, on average, my instance consumes about 700MB per day. I could cut that down if I federated with less communities, and I could get it down to 400-500MB per day (probably less) if I blocked my instance from generating thumbnails.
It’s not a lot, but over time it will add up. My instance is pretty new, and I have no idea what pruning options are available yet. I’ve got over a month before I have to worry about storage space at the rate I’m using it.
As for system requirements, as long as you’re not supporting users besides yourself, Lemmy will pretty much run on a potato.
TL;DR
EDIT: Turns out ~90% of my Lemmy data is just for debugging and not needed:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3103#issuecomment-1631643416
That’s it, I think some political people need their own potato! Put them on an island and the only contact they have is liking their own comments and posts…
Federation is done per community?! Ok, this creates more questions:
Then why are instances defederating whole instances if they’re unhappy with the content of specific communities?
And more on topic: What about new communities? Do you need to manually federate with need communities on an instance? This seems like a hassle… How does e.g. lemmy-world do it?
Because on a public instance with many users, any single user can put the URL to a community in the search bar and start the federation. Then it will start showing up on that instance’s “All” tab. If I go to lemmy.world right now and use their search bar to search for someweird.instance/c/among_us_porn, everyone will see those posts on “All.” Based on the name, most people probably don’t want to see that, so they’d be tempted to defederate.
Also, accounts belonging to users on other instances can comment on any public post on any instance, provided they haven’t been defederated. So defederation targets belligerent user accounts too.
If you’re running a fresh new instance for yourself - yes. Larger instances like lemmy.world don’t have this problem because it only takes one person to start federation. If that one person starts it, every other user will just see it as another community and it will be pretty convenient.
Federation isn’t that complicated though. You just pop the link to the community in your search bar and you’re done.
Thanks for explaining it! I think I understand now!