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.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    6 months ago

    how much is the Fediverse’s energy usage compared to those of AI services or cryptocurrency farms?

    Practically 0.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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        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.