Some people love saying Mastodon/OStatus is very scalable because of federation but let's be honest that's some bullshit. It's easy to split and multiply, but that's not scaling.
The birdsite is much easier to scale.
Just imagine one edge case we're not seeing for now: many people using it (let's say millions) and following a very famous person
That person must have their own instance at this point, at least.
... what happens when they toot?
just imagine the enormous peaks and lag it'll do. And we're not even talking about media.
How would Mastodon realistically handle Katy Perry? I have no idea.
Sure it will work without that edge case, it's not *necessary* to have very famous people, but current society and all that.
that's something really important for the success of a social network these days. If something's gonna "kill" (=slow its evolution, really) it's probably that
@CobaltVelvet this is something I'd really like to simulate - set up a test fediverse of N instances on VMs on a closed network, populate them with userbases, rig the follow graph of one, set the others to boost/fav/expand/etc. and see what the numbers look like during propagation like you describe.
@CobaltVelvet because if the network /can/ handle it, having a high profile account with personal/fan base instance with high profile account support staff moderating the instance could be highly attractive to people who now have to entrust maintaining those connections via a third party provider like twtr.
