Posted in
Fediverse
TIL the fediverse basically DDOS's sites when you share a link.
I shared a link from NPR Tiny Desk but there was no image preview or video embed. After investigating this I learned that when you do that, each instance picks up the link and individually retrieves the link preview nearly simultaneously. For gargantuan sites like YT or Reddit, this is a trivial amount of traffic and not a problem, but for smaller sites like NPR this results in a sort of botnet DDOS attack on the site’s servers. More here. Another example here . For that reason, NPR has blocked Fediverse servers like Mastodon.
I have experienced this on my personal server as well (DDOS), but at the time didn’t know why, exactly.
This isn’t the end of the world, but certainly is not great and hurts engagement with the content. Is there a solution for this? Perhaps using some sort of webtorrent service like PeerTube where they just fetch the information from another fediverse server instead of the source server? Maybe fetching embeds client-side? At least that would stagger the requests.
I’m not exactly sure why a web server can’t handle legit web traffic, just because it’s a lot? I agree that smaller actors should be given a little breastfeeding but solving it on the other side is bad architecture. A legit request can never be compared to a a ddos attack, the overloaded net has to throttle and then the instances need to retry with a generous enough delay.
Options for solutions to another systems problems are all going to introduce more problems. Sure, the requests could honestly be routed to a cache and it would help this problem, att least until it breaks or is exploited. But it would never be truly solved that way.
:petthex_javasparrow:しゅいろ:petthex_javasparrow:(本物)
liked this activity
しゅいろさんの
たすかる
@julian I am running radicale for my family's calendars: https://radicale.org
1 more link(s)
@acka47 Looks interesting, thanks!
The past, present, and future share a show floor at Pinball Expo 2026
Flipping through the highlights in and around Pinball Expo 2026.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/the-past-present-and-future-share-a-show-floor-at-pinball-expo-2026/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
@arstechnica I didn’t even know a pinball conference existed, but now I’m sad that I missed it.
mmu_man
boosted
yeah wtf be civilized
:petthex_javasparrow:しゅいろ:petthex_javasparrow:(本物)
liked this activity
MisskeyはVue3使ってるんだっけ
自分はちょっとかじったことしかないけど
🫧 Social coding commons
boosted
#w3cTPAC breakout
"Private Groups in ActivityPub"
🗓️ 28 October 2026, 14:00–15:00 GMT
▶️ https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/e94352d9-97c8-40ac-8518-535431f6b0b2/
Join @evan's session to discuss extending the @w3c #ActivityPub #Webstandard to support membership in groups, including private groups.
ps1 horror fiction
Linux passes 10% market share? AI hijacking is the new SEO - Linux Weekly News
Posted in
Fediverse
T4V0@lemmy.world
liked this activity
Seems abusable though
If one instance doesn’t trust another, they shouldn’t federate in the first place.
Posted in
Fediverse
T4V0@lemmy.world
liked this activity
I have my blog address (which goes to my home server) in my Mastodon profile, and every time I post on Masto, my server gets a request from every Mastodon site that federates with my instance - i.e. hundreds of requests. It’s no problem for my server, because my blog is a static site, but for anything that dynamically generates every single page impression (like worpress or joomla), it could be a problem. Caching settings might help, I suppose.
Truth is, though, I get far more traffic from vulnerability scanners and AI crawlers that don’t honour robots.txt (or aren’t yet listed).
Posted in
Fediverse
T4V0@lemmy.world
liked this activity
Yeah, thats how it should be: one download, everyone else downloads from that server, not the original source.
Seems abusable though
Posted in
Fediverse
T4V0@lemmy.world
liked this activity
It is, but that’s what defederation is for: If there are instances that are being sketchy, they are supposed to get cut off from the rest of the Fediverse.
Every time there's a new study on the negative impact of LLM tools on education, work, communications, and media, at least half the commentariat will always go "but you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, 'AI' has constructive uses!" even as they pretend to be 'critics'.
How bad do the effects have to get before they finally go "okay, yeah, maybe it is more bad than good"?
@baldur Some people are unable to process negative externalities weighed against immediate positive benefits until it personally affects them. Or competing demands require prioritization.
If saying "thing is bad" doesn't work then we'd do well to find another strategy, such as understanding what the positive benefits they think they get and figuring out alternate solutions for those.
If it's about productivity or reliance on making money then making life/health less dependent on having a job.
MisskeyはVue3使ってるんだっけ
自分はちょっとかじったことしかないけど
Posted in
Fediverse
T4V0@lemmy.world
liked this activity
Is there a reason why the publishing instance is not downloading the preview image, and then submits it with the post to the other instances? This way they would not have to fetch it themselves.
Posted in
Fediverse
T4V0@lemmy.world
liked this activity
Thanks for bringing this up. I think in general we need to work on optimisation of Activitypub and Threadiverse implementations of it.
