Recently, I was chatting with a friend, and we were talking about ‘de-Googling’, federated networks and self-hosted services. As I was listing the benefits and my largely positive experience with them (the Fediverse for the most part), my friend pointed out that it isn’t an environmentally friendly solution, nor is it optimised for the long term. He told me that it requires more machines that consume more energy than a single large one, as these machines aren’t specialised for hosting services. What’s your view on the argument that ‘several small machines that consume more energy are less optimised and eco-friendly than a single large one built and designed for that purpose’? I realise that the large machine goes hand in hand with techno-fascists and that they are the real problem, but what if we were to look at this from a purely technical, forward-looking perspective on a clean future? How would you respond to this ?
As an environmental science major (graduating in a few months) no and NO. I won’t touch up on the things others have commented already, but it’s ludicrous to suggest that grassroots internet spaces are more detrimental than large centralized corporate-owned platforms. Small internet efforts are a lot more conscious about how much space their activities take up, how much energy is spent to run it and how to minimize costs. Large internet platforms that are so spam-riddled and inflated with bullshit they will NEVER be more efficient. The companies that run them won’t benefit from real person and genuine content traffic. Not to mention that the data-hogging these companies are doing and the numerous background processes they’re running have a footprint of their own.
Tell this dingus to go outside… or rather inside an indie web community