3 ms·

ActivityPub seems to require a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly, which is unfortunate. It’s not something I would ever want to run myself, esp

by qudat 2y ago

ActivityPub seems to require a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly, which is unfortunate. It’s not something I would ever want to run myself, especially to the public.

rtpg 2y ago
I wonder how much of that is endemic to ActivityPub or how much is about the software stack itself I don’t mean to be glib, just wondering if things can be “done better”
- qudat 2y ago
  I'm guessing the syncing process between instances is really brutal on resources. Imagine constantly syncing external databases for your service to function properly.
  - rtpg 2y ago
    I thought AP was push-based though? Might be wrong of course, and I think stuff like media is its own thing
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    AP is push based (which actually causes the "every instance has its own set of comments" problem). You can run pullers on a small instance to get a better experience if the remote sides support listing posts, but the standard sync process is no more than receiving HTTPS calls and storing the JSON contents in the right place. There's some additional overhead (doing HTTPS calls for verifying signatures, for instance) but that information can be cached pretty effectively. Pushing contents is no more than posting HTTPS calls to every server in your follow lists, and possibly exposing said content in a GET API for pullers, though that's entirely optional. Mastodon is heavy because of the way the backend is written (I blame Ruby on Rails for tha one), but there are fully featured ActivityPub servers out there that are orders of magnitude more efficient. Mastodon devs prefer the ease of development over performance but that's a choice, not an inherent problem of ActivityPub.
SLWW 2y ago
Please be wary to conflate ActivityPub with the code on top of it, like Mastodon for instance; which is, on both front and back-end, proven to be resource intensive and difficult/costly to scale especially over time. (the older the dbs get, the more inactive users pile up, etc.) Versus something like Pleroma; which I've used since it's inception, being incredibly janky and lightweight, prone to breaking, but later versions have mostly ironed out most of those catastrophic bugs. It has it's own challenges as well, but it does historically scale better, is more flexible, and less intensive per instance One demands a lot of money and time, where the other demands a lot of time and not so much on the money side. I'm not going to spend the time to give you a history of pleroma/mastodon instances, as it's a controversial history at best and there's a lot of people who know little, yet who will believe themselves an oracle. (ofc that could also be me so take it with a grain of salt and all) Though if you are willing to read through a bunch of highly opinionated accounts, and you pay close attention to what actually happened, the answer is pretty clear. ActivityPub is intensive, but not the main culprit.
zimpenfish 2y ago
> ActivityPub seems to require a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly Correction: "The Mastodon software requires a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly" Alternatives like GotoSocial, Akkoma, even Honk are much less resource intensive.

by qudat 2y ago

ActivityPub seems to require a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly, which is unfortunate. It’s not something I would ever want to run myself, especially to the public.

rtpg 2y ago

I wonder how much of that is endemic to ActivityPub or how much is about the software stack itself I don’t mean to be glib, just wondering if things can be “done better”

qudat 2y ago
I'm guessing the syncing process between instances is really brutal on resources. Imagine constantly syncing external databases for your service to function properly.
- rtpg 2y ago
  I thought AP was push-based though? Might be wrong of course, and I think stuff like media is its own thing
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  AP is push based (which actually causes the "every instance has its own set of comments" problem). You can run pullers on a small instance to get a better experience if the remote sides support listing posts, but the standard sync process is no more than receiving HTTPS calls and storing the JSON contents in the right place. There's some additional overhead (doing HTTPS calls for verifying signatures, for instance) but that information can be cached pretty effectively. Pushing contents is no more than posting HTTPS calls to every server in your follow lists, and possibly exposing said content in a GET API for pullers, though that's entirely optional. Mastodon is heavy because of the way the backend is written (I blame Ruby on Rails for tha one), but there are fully featured ActivityPub servers out there that are orders of magnitude more efficient. Mastodon devs prefer the ease of development over performance but that's a choice, not an inherent problem of ActivityPub.

SLWW 2y ago

Please be wary to conflate ActivityPub with the code on top of it, like Mastodon for instance; which is, on both front and back-end, proven to be resource intensive and difficult/costly to scale especially over time. (the older the dbs get, the more inactive users pile up, etc.) Versus something like Pleroma; which I've used since it's inception, being incredibly janky and lightweight, prone to breaking, but later versions have mostly ironed out most of those catastrophic bugs. It has it's own challenges as well, but it does historically scale better, is more flexible, and less intensive per instance One demands a lot of money and time, where the other demands a lot of time and not so much on the money side. I'm not going to spend the time to give you a history of pleroma/mastodon instances, as it's a controversial history at best and there's a lot of people who know little, yet who will believe themselves an oracle. (ofc that could also be me so take it with a grain of salt and all) Though if you are willing to read through a bunch of highly opinionated accounts, and you pay close attention to what actually happened, the answer is pretty clear. ActivityPub is intensive, but not the main culprit.

zimpenfish 2y ago

> ActivityPub seems to require a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly Correction: "The Mastodon software requires a lot of hardware resources in order to run properly" Alternatives like GotoSocial, Akkoma, even Honk are much less resource intensive.