Notices by Ryan Wild (wild1145@mastodonapp.uk)

@admin There's nothing automatic about it, it's a list that I import and then review as part of the import. My choice to use the list was based off months of reviewing the list and the way it was curated, and the fact it can't be swayed by one or even two of the instances's ban lists that contribute towards it.

I haven't got the time, capacity or funding to hire the people to review the quantity of instances that we federate with in order to make decisions in the proactive way we should be.

@renchap @thisismissem Yes, currently it'll dump the database to disk, gzip it and upload it to a bucket. I'm just testing now that I think I have free'd up just enough space that the current VM in it's current config might just be able to perform a single backup at a time (Which was an issue with my old setup as it was backing up different backups but during overlapping times)

I'm looking to see if there are any cost effective solutions that don't introduce issues where the sites are more likely to run slow or otherwise crash but it's easier said than done.

Right now our database server host is running at 99.75% disk usage, and it's having some fairly significant operational impact behind the scene (As well as me loosing a lot of sleep over the fact) and while the container running the database has some headroom, it's not enough.

One of the fall-outs of sorts from the maintenance this morning is it's identified a fairly significant storage issue across our servers. Right now there isn't a huge amount I can realistically do other than invest a lot of money in more servers (And that's not entirely financially viable with the current state of donations from here and Universeodon (And it impacts both)).

I'm fortunate enough to get a solid amount per month in Donations, with a relatively small chunk being monthly subscriptions (A lot of our monthly income is you kind folks giving ad-hoc contributions) / payments, however we're just starting to out grow our original architecture and design and I am locked in with some of our infrastructure to contractual obligations / purchase agreements which helped to save us a lot of money in the longer term.

Our other database host for Universeodon is sitting at a bit over 80% disk usage, and we have one of our more general purpose application servers running at 80% and another at over 90% as well.

This means I'm starting to have to look at if the current scale we are running the site at is sustainable (For both here and Universeodon) and if reducing the amount of servers we have is going to be the only real option forward so we can invest in a larger capacity server for our DB's.

MastodonApp.UK and Universeodon won't be going anywhere I want to make that very clear. I just need to figure out if there is a cost effective and scalable way to grow our storage capacity without causing more technical headaches or making things a lot worse. If I can't I will have a look into options to scale back some of our servers and reduce our footprint so we can make investments into new servers with the higher capacity we urgently need.

@thisismissem We managed to shave around 80GB in our statuses table today through a vacume full and ultimately exporting and re-importing the database to fix the encoding issue. One of the bigger issues is needing to re-export the DB, re-build the database VM entirely and re-creating it as the disk has ballooned a lot larger than it actually needs, but at the same time we need 2.5x the size of the DB to be free on disk at any given time for effective / full backups of the DB.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist And I 100% agree about these spaces. And as someone who runs one (and am not a billionaire by any stretch of the imagination) I appreciate the value to myself and to this community. It is however an area in general that we (humans) aren't used to and don't really understand.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist I'm super fortunate to get enough monthly in donations to cover the infrastructure and hosting costs for my instances, but they don't cover any of my time or my mods time, but everyone will still expect that high quality of service the traditional social gives you. Unfortunately we can't have both in this world.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist For me the fact I know they are wanting to federate at least means I know they are storing my data. They could have much cheaper and without much effort have gathered all the fedi data without any of us ever knowing, and it's those groups / companies that I'm concerned by. The chatgpt scrapers of the world.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist A lot of the issue with Threads that I see is the lack of understanding of what's actually happening from that tech perspective and the difference (or lack there of) from defederation. It doesn't stop that info being very public and it doesn't stop meta or anyone else scraping it.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist We do however need to make sure we as a whole are being careful what we share and that is aligned with our original risk. I personally don't mind using my name and picture and it being linkable back to other online identities but I understand the risks and drawbacks that brings. But I am a techy.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist We absolutely need to be mindful of what we are sharing and for what purpose, given Mastodon and the fedi as a whole has a very low bar for identity, we are at an advantage here and I think that flexibility combined with folks as a whole starting to understand the importance of their privacy online is great.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist Absolutely don't disagree with anything you've said, I'm just trying to stay away from a lot of the misinformation that's been flying around recently. To your original analogy, 100% and in the same thread you close your curtains (I certainly do!) when I'm getting changed for privacy I don't brick up my windows.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @Gargron @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist This ultimately comes down to risk, if you don't care that the currently public data is public and accessible by Meta / others then federation with them actually makes no difference in that regard. If you can't accept that risk then that data shouldn't be accessible publicly and shouldn't be on IT Systems you can't end to end control... It's not great but it's where we are today.

@paprikapink @MaJ1 @HistoPol @Gargron @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist If you believe it could happen and you believe it's a risk, you should genuinely burn your online profiles and accounts entirely because you can't be sure that data won't be hacked / breached / stolen...

I can tell you what currently happens today and how federation makes absolutely 0 difference to the data sharing / access capabilities.

@MaJ1 @paprikapink @HistoPol @Gargron @OlDude82 @si_irini @mina @evelynefoerster @theropologist It's worth remembering all that metadata about your account is already public through API's and can be accessed from any mastodon instance (not just your home one). Meta can't access anything a normal instance cannot access or that someone viewing your profile couldn't access. Threads won't get some sort of magic / special access to instances for federating, they could "scrape" the info right now.

@ArtBear So I believe it's a limitation in Mastodon code and not something we control. @renchap might have a better idea than me but I'm 99% sure it's not anything I can change.

Pro Tip: If you have an account with the handle "terf" and tell people what opinions to read and not read you can be sure you're going to get yeeted (As they did).

The highlight to this... This appeal "I did nothing wrong and you are being bigoted against women"

These individuals have no place on my instances and as the person who wrote the rules (with a lot of help from my mods) they are very much the problem.

Fuck right the way off, and when you get there, keep on fucking off.