doesn't running a Mastodon instance require replicating everything ? I wonder how many people are prepare to saturate a gigabit link and run a terrabit scale database.....
@cjd Not *everything*, the instance only federates the posts that users on it are following. No one subscribes to everything - although some follow_bots seem to be trying hard. Of course that still means that the bandwidth requirements for large instances are not a joke.
@cjd No no, not at all - if you only open a few accounts on the instance itself some have said it could be run on something absurd like a Raspberry Pi
The info it pulls is just text and even then only for profiles that are followed by native accounts
@cjd it *does*, but you dont automatically federate with everyone
@cjd Only the content of toots by people followed by users of the instance, and thumbnails of photos in these toots
@cjd I thought of running one, but saw it was a ruby app... so Nope!
@cjd can't have lemmings without a cliff.
@cjd only if your users follow someone from every other instance, I think. It does raise the question of how you find someone to follow once there are millions of instances