@p @cvnt @ins0mniak @transgrammaractivist @Owl @dj @NonPlayableClown The main problem is that lain likely never expected to Pleroma grow this large to instances with hundreds of users. Something which would have influenced some of the design decisions. And that the developers don't run those active big instances.

I don't remember what version FSE runs on (2.2.X I think), but I can say that at least things didn't get worse with releases from 2.5.0 to current develop (apart from maybe increased IO usage I have yet to investigate in 2.7.0). I heard that some of the expensive DB queries were improved recently. Feld also committed some fixes found with static analysis and that's about it.

You can still run Pleroma on cheap hardware, it just requires a lot of know-how in optimizing Postgres and Linux. FluffyTail runs on BuyVMs $7 tier with the DB stored on a slab and it is yet to encounter a major performance issue after 1.5 years. Granted I'm the only user, so there isn't a lot of stress on the system.