#horizontalfederation — Public Fediverse posts

Another aspect of this (which comes up often to me) is, what kind of scaling strategy would fit better considering the #Mastodon system *and* protocol architecture?

Would from a network perspective (and overall) be less expensive (computationally) to apply #VerticalFederation to servers?

Or would it be better/would ease the load if we decentralize into smaller instances through #HorizontalFederation and pay the network #federation overhead price?

@Gargron any thoughts on this?

But I believe, with the appropriate #UI #UX tweaks on the #Mastodon onboarding experience, the same role could easily be accomplished with a core group of (generalist) servers acting up as those #PrimeServers (accompanied by open registration/saturation info for each server) which would, in its case, support a good #decentralization level to maintain a good network and platform health.

With the appropriate #UX in place, #HorizontalFederation also seems a viable solution for #fediverse growth.

To tackle this I see three generic scaling strategies emerging from the discussion:

#VerticalFederation akin to @Gargron/mastodon.social, scaling 'up' the most popular servers to keep up with demand.

#HorizontalFederation advocating a more fragmented/decentralized ecosystem with servers breaking up into smaller instances, and solutions like account count limits.

#FlatFederation advocating mostly for a greater #SingleTenant approach, where everyone should set up their own mastodon server.

@katzenberger @Gargron I can see Mastodon having a bunch of core (generalist) servers to support it - the ones new users turn to when joining, because that's the norm on non-federated social platforms.

Limiting account count is sensible, IMHO.

But given the above, I wonder what should be the best approach: a couple big servers extraordinarily scaled (#VerticalFederation)? Or a dozen medium sized "core generalist" servers (adding more if needed) (#HorizontalFederation)?

cc @aral