- Square Singer ( @squaresinger@feddit.de ) 30•11 months ago
Two things: the data on the instance will be gone.
The posts/comments that were replicated on other instances will stay, but they will be defederated, meaning they will not ever be synced up woth other instances’ replications of these posts/comments. Every instance will just have their own, insular copy.
- jaamulberry ( @Jaamulberry@beehaw.org ) 14•11 months ago
I see this as a big issue for content going forward. I get that reddit is one single point of failure but I wonder how you can keep knowledge in a static state when most instances lose money and it’s a hobby. What happens when the owner grows tired.
- ImplyingImplications ( @ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ) 9•11 months ago
How often do you revisit forum posts you made in 2007? Some content doesn’t need to be preserved
- jaamulberry ( @Jaamulberry@beehaw.org ) 30•11 months ago
It’s not about visiting a forum post I made in 2007. It’s about visiting a forum post about an obscure issue that someone solved in 2007.
- milkisklim ( @milkisklim@lemm.ee ) 11•11 months ago
- Wahots ( @Wahots@pawb.social ) 3•11 months ago
This is so stupidly relevant to strange motherboard problems. I hope that lemmy is able to be scraped by web crawlers to help assist with these sorts of problems in the future.
- Ada ( @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English9•11 months ago
That part won’t change. If your current instance was federated with an obscure community/instance before that community/instance disappeared, then you will still have the content from back then and will be able to find the discussion and solution
- jaamulberry ( @Jaamulberry@beehaw.org ) English1•11 months ago
Even if my instance never interacted with that instance?
- Ada ( @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English7•11 months ago
Well no, but then you weren’t going to find it anyway, even if the other instance was still around
- jaamulberry ( @Jaamulberry@beehaw.org ) English1•11 months ago
I would argue the instance still gets indexed by Google and if it was around I could Google search for the result.
- capacitor ( @capacitor@reddthat.com ) 5•11 months ago
It would certainly be nice to replace stack overflow with a good Lemmy instance, but have the data guaranteed to remain around.
- Square Singer ( @squaresinger@feddit.de ) 3•11 months ago
That still works with replication. What won’t work is having any discussion going forward be replicated over all replications. But the replication works fine for archival purpouses.
- Big P ( @peter@feddit.uk ) 7•11 months ago
Could also be an issue from a data privacy perspective. If I want to delete comments I left, but the instance I made them on has shut down how can I delete them?
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 4•11 months ago
Perhaps each client should keep data. Something like a blockchain, with redundant copies stored on clients and clients using some consensus protocol to agree on what the real history is.
- Square Singer ( @squaresinger@feddit.de ) 6•11 months ago
Blockchain is the worst possible solution for this. There are much better versions of this.
Also, no need for clients to keep gigabytes or even terrabytes of data. That’s what you have instances for.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 4•11 months ago
Do the copies on other instances ever expire and get cleared? Or will they stay indefinitely, without updates?
- Square Singer ( @squaresinger@feddit.de ) 1•11 months ago
Number 2. They will stay without updates unless an admin cleans it manually. It wouldn’t be hard to build a bot to do that automatically, but by default it will just stay.