Recently, I was chatting with a friend, and we were talking about ‘de-Googling’, federated networks and self-hosted services. As I was listing the benefits and my largely positive experience with them (the Fediverse for the most part), my friend pointed out that it isn’t an environmentally friendly solution, nor is it optimised for the long term. He told me that it requires more machines that consume more energy than a single large one, as these machines aren’t specialised for hosting services. What’s your view on the argument that ‘several small machines that consume more energy are less optimised and eco-friendly than a single large one built and designed for that purpose’? I realise that the large machine goes hand in hand with techno-fascists and that they are the real problem, but what if we were to look at this from a purely technical, forward-looking perspective on a clean future? How would you respond to this ?
Well if you have a small enough server, couldn’t it be powered by solar?
That isnt always the case. A single large machine will consume a lot of resources and will produce a large amount of waste which is often the reason why companies dont want to deal with it responsibly. Theres less thought into the infrastructure and is geared more towards profit which explains my why companies will always irresponsibly pollute with their byproducts. Think landfills, no matter how much money they throw to pass on the problems to another company, they will all cut corners. This has a far larger impact on the ecological system than a smaller machine.
On the other hand, a smaller self hosted machine allows for the person/local group to properly plan out the infrastructure to not only efficiently use resources but to also effectively process/handle byproducts.
Self-hosted services are only serving their purpose, they’re not serving ads, crunching user data, training unwanted AI algorithms…
He may have a point, but as someone else pointed out, a lot of these self-hosted services are running on out of date equipment that wouldn’t be used for anything else.
I run all my Fediverse stuff on an old Dell R620 that a friend gave me. Mine is totally specialised for hosting… Yes, it is overkill for my ~10 users, but hopefully more friends will join. Also, it’s not the most efficient way of doing it - the device is probably 10 years old and uses ~130w 24/7. A newer NUC or equivalent would probably only use 40-50w. However, who else is going to use this machine? No company would touch it, “everything” is going cloudy, so it would either be stripped for parts and the rest dumped either in landfill or sent to some 3rd world country.
You can claim it’s a waste of electricity to use it, but a lot of energy and materials were used to create the server in the first place, and most of that will be lost, even with recycling.
People run Fediverse (and other services) on a Raspberry PI - fine for a couple of users, but too restrictive for my use. These things only use 5-20w, which is amazing.
My electricity supply is from a “green” supplier, and I have a local SolarPV system that powers the system when there is enough sun. Last summer I managed to run it for over a month using my local system only. There’s no reason that we can’t build more renewable sources of electricity. Here in the UK there’s a proposed 140 DCs in in the planning phases, which is ridiculous, all for AI BS.
Self-hosting isn’t for everyone of course - not every household should do this, but there’s no reason why groups of friends, families or “activity” groups couldn’t do this effectively.
It’s absolutely optimized for the long term - how many Google services have been discontinued when there are still users, just not enough to be profitable? Self-hosted services can run as long people are interested. A mail server created 20 years ago is still compatible and useable today because it uses ratified, slow-moving standards.
Hmm i get where your friend is coming from but he’s literally falling for the corporate bait lol. he’s talking about “efficiency” like it’s a physics equation but forgetting how these companies actually run.
first of all big data centers are “efficient” on paper but they waste half their energy just on cooling and massive hvac systems. a small server or a vps slice doesn’t have that industrial overhead. and more importantly—the e-waste. google and meta bin their servers every 3 years to keep that “efficiency” high. self-hosters are out here running mastodon on 10-year-old laptops that were headed for a landfill. reusing “obsolete” tech is way greener than building a brand new “optimized” server from scratch. also look at what they’re actually processing. google/meta are data gluttons—they’re burning megawatts just to track your every click and serve you ads. an “inefficient” federated node that only handles your actual messages is still way better for the planet than a “perfect” machine processing petabytes of surveillance crap. it’s like saying a bus is more efficient than a bike because it carries more people, but the bus is driving in circles for no reason. but honestly the efficiency argument is a total distraction. like okay cool maybe a massive machine is 5% more optimized… so what? we’re talking about the literal infrastructure of human freedom. if we don’t build these decentralized networks now and get used to hosting our own shit we are literally handing the keys of our entire lives to 3 or 4 giant corporations and the state.
Once they have total control over every byte you send and every person you talk to “environmental friendliness” is gonna be the absolute last thing on your mind. you’ll be living in a digital cage where you can’t even organize a protest or share an opinion without an algorithm deleting it. id rather have a “less efficient” network that actually belongs to us than a perfectly green digital gulag where we have zero rights.
Worrying about the carbon footprint of a home server while the world is sliding into techno-fascism is like worrying about the fuel efficiency of the bus taking you to a labor camp. it’s completely missing the point. if we don’t have the infrastructure to resist today we won’t have a future to be “green” in tomorrow.
