I think I have seen that guy around the Hubzilla Fediverse for a while so I don’t think this is a quick hit-piece of someone having no idea about the Fediverse. But the headline is definitely a bit sensationalist.
Anyways, of course a Gemini site or so will have a lower environmental footprint than a Lemmy instance. There are trade-offs between functionality/usability and energy/hardware efficiency for sure.
The question is when does it become too much?
Obviously Bitcoin is at the far end of useless waste of resources, but closer to the Fediverse there are some projects that are also questionably over-engineered in that regard.
Matrix for example comes to mind, which replicates huge amounts of data and constantly tries to merge server data-bases (at quite significant expense of compute resources) for a largely hypothetical usage scenario where distributed chat-rooms are of vital importance.
And in the ActivityPub space those projects that try to implement chats or other fast moving communication methods over a protocol that was primarily designed for slow personal message posting are probably also wasting resources (and reinventing the wheel).
On the positive side, decentralization can help resource efficiency by making it easy to self-host and thus reusing existing server capacity and reuse old hardware. ActivityPub projects like Epicyon or in general efficient chat protocols like XMPP or IRC are definitely saving resources through decentralization.
I think I have seen that guy around the Hubzilla Fediverse for a while so I don’t think this is a quick hit-piece of someone having no idea about the Fediverse. But the headline is definitely a bit sensationalist.
Anyways, of course a Gemini site or so will have a lower environmental footprint than a Lemmy instance. There are trade-offs between functionality/usability and energy/hardware efficiency for sure.
The question is when does it become too much?
Obviously Bitcoin is at the far end of useless waste of resources, but closer to the Fediverse there are some projects that are also questionably over-engineered in that regard.
Matrix for example comes to mind, which replicates huge amounts of data and constantly tries to merge server data-bases (at quite significant expense of compute resources) for a largely hypothetical usage scenario where distributed chat-rooms are of vital importance.
And in the ActivityPub space those projects that try to implement chats or other fast moving communication methods over a protocol that was primarily designed for slow personal message posting are probably also wasting resources (and reinventing the wheel).
On the positive side, decentralization can help resource efficiency by making it easy to self-host and thus reusing existing server capacity and reuse old hardware. ActivityPub projects like Epicyon or in general efficient chat protocols like XMPP or IRC are definitely saving resources through decentralization.