Comment on What features are missing from piefed, or, why aren't we reccommending piefed instead of lemmy?
Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 3 weeks agoWe have data on what it costs to run a sizeable instance of Lemmy and it’s not a lot. How does Piefed compare? Anyone starting an instance who envisions it growing large has to contend with this question.
I don’t think this is a major concern yet. The largest PieFed instance has 308 active users, 2nd place has 34. They’ve got room to grow.
piefed.fediverse.observer/list
People can start posting about PieFed on Reddit and see how the Reddit users react.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
But how is that not a concern if you’re interested in attracting more users? You run an instance with 500 users. Some thread on Reddit explodes and you get 1000-10000 users. If Piefed has poor scaling you might be unable to pay the bills for your now much larger instance. That’s not gonna be great for you or the new users.
Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 3 weeks ago
I think it’s unlikely that they would attract such a large number of users with 1 post/comment on r/RedditAlternatives or something. Lemmy gets spammed everywhere and we usually don’t even gain 1000 users a day overall across all instances.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Sure but does the rate of growth matter? The post asks about recommending Piefed instead of Lemmy. I presume the point is that the number of Piefed users would grow if we did that. So whether a thread produces 10, 1000, or 10000 users in a day, the number of users would grow over time. Then I think the question remains, if my Piefed instance costs $10/mo to run today, would it cost $100 with 10000 users or $1000, or more, or less?
Relevant
Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 3 weeks ago
The rate of growth does matter yea. If an instance gets worried, they can lock signups. Slow growth means the software has time to improve as they notice issues.
Lemmy had many issues scaling before, except Lemmy had huge surges with the Reddit API blackouts.
If people start recommending PieFed now, it’s on their own terms instead of a massive wave. They can backoff if they get too many users.