I spent several hours tracing in production (updating the code a dozen times with extra logging) to identify the actual path the lemmy_server code uses for outbound federation of votes to subscribed servers.

Major popular servers, Beehaw, Leemy.world, Lemmy.ml - have a large number of instance servers subscribing to their communities to get copies of every post/comment. Comment votes/likes are the most common activity, and it is proposed that during the PERFORMANCE CRISIS that outbound vote/like sharing be turned off by these overwhelmed servers.

pull request for draft:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/compare/main...RocketDerp:lemmy_comment_votes_nofed1:no_federation_of_votes_outbound0

EDIT: LEMMY_SKIP_FEDERATE_VOTES environment variable

  • RoundSparrowOPM
    1·
    1 year ago

    Why not just federate the upvote count and downvote count?

    I think the answer to that is that it isn’t an optimized design.

    Does each server need to track the identity of every voter on a subscribed community?

    I think so. Which isn’t a terrible assumption that user who votes will eventually comment/post and that profile will be of use.