Problem: Disk space might run short in the long-term

[jorgesat]

As instance maintainers, we need to have a long-term strategy to host the media generated by our users. In the short- and mid-term, this is feasible but will become challenging when planning long-term strategies.

Proposed solution:
To implement a IPFS uploader module, like the one used in Akkoma: https://git.unitoo.it/claudiomaradonna/akkoma-ipfs

[weex]

Agree this is a problem and it would be great to see IPFS for a decentralized, no/low-cost option.

Another solution is to use AWS S3.

From an economic standpoint I've always wondered how IPFS works. I understand that content can be pinned by which one or more paid services ensures content availability, however that just seems like cloud storage with extra steps. I wonder if anyone's done a study of how reliable the network is for unpinned content.

[politas]

Does this require the users to have the IPFS extension in their browser, or does the server retrieve the files from IPFS before sending them to the user, thus reducing storage costs at the expense of bandwidth?

I wonder if anyone's done a study of how reliable the network is for unpinned content.
If it's like bittorrent as they say, it would probably be pretty unreliable for obscure content like someone's short video from their holiday that only a few family members want to see.

Interesting to see a study done, indeed.

[weex]

Does this require the users to have the IPFS extension in their browser, or does the server retrieve the files from IPFS before sending them to the user, thus reducing storage costs at the expense of bandwidth?

Looking at the akkoma-ipfs implementation it seems uploads go through the server. Downloads then hit a gateway which is like a CDN. Seems fairly equivalent to the S3 resource footprint. c4.social is still using local storage but when it comes time to support more data I'd love to have this as an option.

[politas]

Searching for information about reliability, it seems to be ok, but:

I too tried IPFS in the past and found it terrible in performance and reliability. But with recent versions, reliability has certainly improved! And it'll find even files with only a single source.
Performance, unfortunately, still leaves much to be desired. It feels uncomfortably like dial-up.