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The results are in, after seeing about 800 boosts on the post to see how the Mastodon embed actually affects our server load. Here's what happened....basically nothing for us.
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

I think itsfoss doesn't have proper caching set up for their CDN and just gets bombarded with every request for the site, possibly every subsequent request by every user as well.
in reply to Christopher Snowhill

@chris as a dynamic site too, we also don't exactly use a plain html cache either, but our website is also around 1mb without browser cache on an article, there's is like 11mb!
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

Maybe your site's just way better on server load than whatever hot mess they're apparently using.
in reply to Christopher Snowhill

@chris they're using cheapo digital ocean vps, it's not surprising, they're not designed to handle load
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

it's kinda funny that instead of hiring someone to submit a patch for their issue, #itsfoss decided to publish the article about their technical problems

The article reads superficial, like vague request for commercial proposal but for free lol

> #Mastodon instance admins, please fix our computer, or else we'll stop reposting to your social network

Folks, this is not journalism...

in reply to Wheatly

@graphito "just hire someone" is not really a valid thing here though for smaller sites, the article framing was poor given how heavy their site is but the issue behind it does exist
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

@graphito It is an issue, especially for self-hosters. I enjoy watching all the victim blaming and denigration that goes along with it, because people pointing out issues with an open source protocol _must_ mean they want to wall garden the entire internet.
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

I admit, similar approach might be justified for small websites (1-2 people) who cannot have budget to deal with technical problems

But surely #itsfoss have the budget to deal with tech. Instead they turned to public activism to save a bit of it.

Why not publish the tech description on freelancer sites and have the patch submitted by monday for $300?

Turns out, to rile up the audience and instance admins is simply cheaper 😳

cc @Baggypants

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

There’s a lot missing here. How many CPU cores? Is this normalized load? What was the latency? Were there timeouts? Why are you looking at ~10 minute intervals when the reported problem is with spikes of ~1 minute? Very “works on my machine” type post
in reply to Grampa

@grampajoe You could try being a bit nicer ya know, this kind of reply in future will just get you muted, this is just the charts my host gives me 🤷
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

Sorry, didn’t mean to be mean. I was concerned that you were using your platform to show that this isn’t a problem without understanding what the problem is.

When a link is posted on an account that’s federated to a lot of instances, it gets accessed many times all at once to generate link previews. That means you should see very short bursts of traffic, and that can be enough to cause requests to queue up and possibly time out or get rejected. Hope that helps

in reply to Grampa

@grampajoe I've never said it isn't a real problem that exists, I just wanted to do a basic test for myself to see and it was fine, nothing more
in reply to Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

I guess I’m trying to say it might not have been fine, because it might not show up as a high load average. If you have server logs (especially proxy logs e.g. nginx) from the time you posted the link, you might see what I’m talking about. The concern I have is that people will see this and think it’s evidence there isn’t a problem given the reach your posts are getting.

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