If content on the fediverse is federated and copied to local instances, then won’t instances have to hold onto a forever increasing amount of data?
I run a private Mastodon Instance. The server gives me the option to automatically delete the media-cache after a given number of days (I have it set to 180 days). If the data is needed again, it will be pulled from the original instance. Again. If still available.
An additional setting is the deletion of the federated content at all, which is saved on my server. This probably cannot be reverted, as the server doesn’t know anymore what to pull from what server… I have this setting at 365 days.
Additionally I can set my personal account to auto delete my own posts after a given time. With being able to set some excludes (favorited, bookmarked, posts which got a minimum of likes, …). But this is not a server setting, it’s an account setting.
Social media does not need to be saved forever. :)
I always called reddit anti-social media since it is anonymous by default, and few people choose to fully de-anonymize themselves. That’s one of my favorite aspects about this style of communication - while obviously some people still managed to get their ego involved, and that can happen even in brief throw-away interactions like 4chan, it’s not nearly as bad as facebook or twitter where online behavior and interactions are tied to ‘real world’ identities.
