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💫 Tumblr x Fediverse

The reason I think an instance as large as Tumblr is detrimental to the fediverse is due to federation.

It only takes one interaction with tumblr for it to send Delete activities to every instance it knows, regardless of size.

You may not realize how often posts are deleted & federated at Mastodon scale, Tumblr would be 50-100x that.

This is just Delete activities, ingesting new tumblr posts + media at this scale is a whole other ball game

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infinite love ⴳ

@dansup this assumes tumblr will follow mastodon's naive implementation instead of being more conservative

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dansup

This leads me to think that most instances will block tumblr once they realize how detrimental it is

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Magess

@dansup I still think they're going to find that tumblr's 100% reblog-with-commentary format just doesn't work with the fediverse in any useful way.

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𝚝𝚓𝚠

@dansup could activitypub have been designed to make this less of a problem?

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Ricardo

@dansup at this scale, doesn't WordPress represent the same risk? I run 2 or 3 WordPress #activitypub that people can follow, while I can use them to talk to AP compatible implementation, it's not like WordPress invaded the #fediverse, even though getting a WP setup with a single user is a matter of minutes.

So if #Tumblr implement #activitypub in a way that turns each blog an actor of the Fediverse, it would just make something like @userblog@tumblr.com

Right?

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Severák

@dansup do I understand correctly that this is a scaling problem? That opening Tumblr for federation would multiple amount of posts to be federated (and actors who can federate)?

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Art Rosnovsky

@dansup could you please explain why this is happening and what exactly are the implications? Like, say, Tumblr joins AP tomorrow: what happens to smaller instances that federate with Tumblr?

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Chris Carlin

@dansup
But think about it from the other end.

If the tumblr users were divided among many other instances, then instead of having one instance sending all of those delete activities to every instance you'd have many instances sending all of those delete activities to every instance.

ActivityPub has some serious scaling issues.

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Braw :blob_cat_melt:

@dansup maybe they can split users into a bunch of basket servers and make it opt-in for their blogs to federate? E.g. @brawuru@ibex.tumblr.com

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echo ✨

@dansup i mean, the idea is definitely doing throttling to avoid DOSing other instances. that's something that's absolutely been considered.

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jaranmiller

@dansup with this being the case, is the fediverse capable of becoming mainstream? If so, what must be in place for it to maintain a huge user base?

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In [[Flancia]] we'll meet!

@dansup I say: [[fork]] the [[Federation]], then try to [[merge]] it back, with good intent and loving kindness

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