Re: A native internet protocol for social media

Marcus wrote:

> Websockets don't scale, do they? Imagine 10k subscribers/subscriptions
> from 10k instances. That means 10k persistent connections/websockets,
> doesn't it?

The reality is that Websockets do, in fact, scale much more than many would
assume. A little bit of Googling turns up many examples of people who have
tested Websocket scaling and found that even personal laptops are capable
of handling 100's of thousands of simultaneous connections. The
introduction of horizontal scaling, load balancers, or exploitation of
various cloud Websocket services, can make large numbers of Websockets
connections reasonably easy to support and less expensive than creating and
tearing down individual short-lived connections. The issue isn't really the
number of connections, but rather the volume of traffic generated in
serving those connections.

 And what is the use case other than real-time? Which shouldn't be a
> requirement.

Every ActivityPub client that I've used attempts to provide at least near
real-time response. I typically get notification of responses, boosts,
likes, etc. within seconds of when they are made. So, although real-time
may not be a stated requirement, it is certainly a service-level that many
clients and servicers attempt to achieve. It would be reasonable to
consider specification modifications that make it easier for such
service-levels to be achieved. Also, we should consider that there is
nearly continuous transfer of information between many servers --
particularly when servers are exchanging information with the larger
instances. A protocol option that reduces the need for continuous
re-establishment of connections would reduce servers' resource requirements.

bob wyman

On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 2:39 AM Marcus Rohrmoser <me+swicg@mro.name> wrote:

> On 17 Apr 2023, at 8:27, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>
> > ne 16. 4. 2023 v 23:48 odesílatel Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us> napsal:
> >
> >> Melvin wrote:
> >
> >>> The challenge lies in creating a protocol that is interoperable,
> >>> scalable, and allows users to have full ownership of their
> >>> conversations.
> >
> > in today's context, one might consider utilizing websockets
>
> Websockets don't scale, do they? Imagine 10k subscribers/subscriptions
> from 10k instances. That means 10k persistent connections/websockets,
> doesn't it? What does that mean in terms of resources (descriptors etc.)
> and energy?
>
> And what is the use case other than real-time? Which shouldn't be a
> requirement. Maybe not even an option from standpoints of personal
> privacy, mental health or technical energy consumption.
>
> ActivityPub isn't instant messaging. And it shouldn't morph into that if
> it brings downsides. Which it does.
>
> Marcus
>
>