There was some talk of this issue in the recent fediverse inefficiencies thread. I'm hopeful that in the future we'll have a decentralized solution for file hosting but for now I deeply believe that users should pay for their own file hosting.

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[–] HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I think IPFS could help the fediverse with storage.

[–] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I expect something like this to end up being the solution, but I think we're far from a consensus in that regard.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think most architecture design decisions are made by the developers of the fediverse projects. If the 3 Lemmy devs or the Mastodon maintainers agreed to do it... (And it's technically feasible.) I suppose it could be done.

I mean as long as it works seemlessly and doesn't violate ActivityPub, we don't really need a consensus of all the users and admins. We just need the server admins to install the next update.

[–] moon@lemmy.cafe 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

To actually keep data persistent on IPFS and not be deleted by the garbage collector, you need to have a server(s) pin the node that holds that data.

You either host these servers yourself, or pay providers to store it for you.

And at that point you just reinvented a server simply hosting your data but with extra steps.

[–] sosodev@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you for pointing that out. I'm not familiar with IPFS but I tend to agree there's no free lunch here. People think you can wave the blockchain wand and free computing appears but there's always costs built in somewhere.