I already get rate-limited like crazy on lemmy and there are only like 60,000 users on my instance. Is each instance really just one server or are there multiple containers running across several hosts? I’m concerned that federation will mean an inconsistent user experience. Some instances many be beefy, others will be under resourced… so the average person might think Lemmy overall is slow or error-prone.
Reddit has millions of users. How the hell is this going to scale? Does anyone have any information about Lemmy’s DB and architecture?
I found this post about Reddit’s DB from 2012. Not sure if Lemmy has a similar approach to ensure speed and reliability as the user base and traffic grows.
https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/reddits-database-has-two-tables/
I love Lemmy but your question is legit. I just signed up with lemmy.world because lemmy.ml is down.
Before making a post in lemmy.world guess what? lemmy.world isn’t responding. I know they have scheduled maintenance at 9 CET but it was 20 minutes before that.
lemmy.world is now the largest single instance by some margin, so new users really should be looking to sign up somewhere else.
Spreading the load across instances is the way forward.
https://join-lemmy.org/instances
https://lemmyverse.net/?order=active
Yes with the big centralized systems of present everyone flocks to one address. Biggest means most active. That’s something to avoid with with Lemmy and the Fediverse. You want to join the best performing, not the biggest. New users probably won’t understand that at first. I was guilty of that myself, initially looking for the biggest server. You don’t need to do that with Lemmy since all instances get the same content (barring any defederation). On the Fediverse you want the best performer, not the biggest.
lemmy.ml has been a slow-motion train wreck all June with errors and failing to send out federation copies. This asklemmy community is homed there, and a lot in the past 24 hours is missing.